Upheaval
by selenopeltis
Summary: The Sky People are gone from Pandora, or are they?  A strangely familiar voice brings a disheartening message for Jake as he becomes one of The People.  Preface is a slight temporal backpedal.  Rated M for language, adult situations and graphic imagery.
1. Preface

**PREFACE**

_Interior, ISV Venture Star._

"What the hell did you do to piss them off, Parker?" snapped an impatient middle-aged, yet attractive woman with shoulder-length silver hair. She was a tall, fit, imposing woman; probably more so from Parker's suddenly inadequate perspective. Flashbacks involuntarily flooded his thoughts. The taunting epithets that his 'friends' had called him during his middle school years back on Earth. He mentally cringed as he recalled gym class in eighth grade when he couldn't get out of having to playing basketball. He was picked last, of course – basketball was a game for the tall, not the 'staturally-challenged' as one of his class mates had called him. Because Parker hadn't grown an inch since the sixth grade, no one wanted the 5 foot 4 inch tall accounting student on their team. He sighed aloud, half because of his memory, and half because of his current situation.

"Parker, I asked you a question," the woman demanded. She was wearing a gray flight suit with strategically placed yellow bars, indicating her status as upper-echelon flight command – she was also wearing an intimidating scowl.

"Can I at least get out of the goddamn airlock before the interrogations start?" he retorted, doing his best to deflect the accusing tone in her voice with one of defiance in his own. He pulled himself through the airlock, and moved four or five handrails into the module before moving off to the side to allow others to pass by. The embarkation/debarkation modules were fairly sizeable structures designed to load and unload personnel and smaller cargo to the Valkyrie shuttles. The EMDEB modules were roughly square in cross-section, with more than half of the space occupied by a large, semi-enclosed cargo elevator. These were used to load and unload the box-like ore carriers and large or bulky items not already stowed in the Valkyrie cargo bays at the start of their journey. The elevator platform was noisily creeping past them, manned by four dock workers wearing orange jumpsuits emblazoned with reflective tape at their extremities, and Parker had paused to let it go past. The wall nearest Parker had a series of padded hand holds, allowing people to move through the module in zero gravity. Against the walls, a series of different sized pipes and wires ran from the spine of the ISV up to the airlock wall, and out through the bulkhead. Parker guessed that these carried jet fuel, rocket fuel, water, and other necessary liquids and gasses to and from the ISV. He couldn't help but feel a tinge of pride, even given his present situation, as he glanced around at the nearly spotless, white module. These people were good at their jobs he thought. His thoughts suddenly came back to _his_ job as the captain spoke again.

"Parker! There are quite a few people up here wondering why we haven't heard a peep from Hell's Gate for the last three days up until about seven hours ago. _Including myself_." She looked at the small man, trying to size up his reaction. Parker gave her a nervous half-laugh as he pushed his way past her and began to move down the module toward the axis of the ship. "What the hell happened down there, Parker?" she repeated her question from slightly behind him now. "Your transmission three days ago was less than unambiguous to say the least." She glared at the back of his head intensely with her aquamarine eyes.

"Captain Daily," Parker began, as he slowly spun around to address the woman, "the last couple of days have been no fun for anyone on Pandora – at least not for anyone who's human. We got our asses handed to us by the Na'vi! They got all pissed off when we bulldozed some frigging sacred ferns or something, and then all hell –"

"**The data I received**," she interrupted, raising her voice a few decibels to make it clear to Parker that she wasn't going to tolerate any half-truths, "was that some insensitive fuck went and attacked a village, blew up their goddamn home, and inflicted a huge number of casualties on them!" Parker pushed slightly back from the woman with his hands raised in front of him. A few other RDA employees who were disembarking the single remaining shuttle were watching the growing spectacle now, while others continued to pull themselves down through the airlock tube and down the EMBED. The module was starting to get uncomfortably claustrophobic for Parker; all he wanted right now was to put some space between himself and the potential mob members that were glaring down at him from multiple angles.

"**Alright**, alright – look, let's just get everyone who's still alive off the god damned shuttle for right now," Parker retorted, raising his own voice to emphasize that he was still the most senior RDA employee, and in charge. "I will debrief senior flight crew just as soon as I can stow some sensitive files and gear that needs to be secured. Do you have a space that I can use temporarily as a base of operations? I'll need a few consoles, some com equipment, and space for a few personnel." Parker intoned this last not as if it were a request.

Captain Daily looked at Parker with contempt clearly written on her face. She waited a long moment, pondering the thought of putting Parker into a cryosleep unit but not giving him the drug cocktail to stop his metabolism or prevent cellular decay. She smiled at the thought, finally saying with a smirk, "It looks like we'll have _plenty_ of spare room if the crew roster you sent back is any indication." Then, a moment later, she pushed past him calling back, "Follow me, I'll get you your space _personally_, so I can drag you to your debrief afterward." He began to follow her down the handrails of the EMDEB module. She called back, "You know, some of the flight crew had friends and family among the ground party." Parker knew where this was going, and he didn't like it. She turned her head and looked back at him with a face completely devoid of emotion, "_Including_ myself."

* * *

The room they were in was small by RDA standards for a debriefing of this importance, but Parker thought it was probably the most expensive conference room he would ever be in, considering it was 4.37 light years from Earth, and in space, _and_ had artificial gravity. From the placard that he had see on the bulkhead door as they entered the room, he knew that this was the officer's mess. It was a Spartan room by Earth standards, fairly small, maybe 10 by 14 feet or so. Two surprisingly solid plastic-top tables were arranged length wise with a number of chairs along one side and a single chair against the corridor-facing wall. A shuttered external window was closed. The room was brightly lit with some kind of light-emitting diode panels, which cast nearly no shadows. As the command staff filed in, captain Daily pointed the chair out for Parker's benefit. When everyone was seated and the door closed and locked, Parker began.

"I just wanna start off by saying how sorry I am to anyone who has lost friends or family on Pandora over the last couple of days…" Parker was standing before thirteen of the senior flight crew of the ISV Venture Star. He had refused to take the seat that the captain had indicated, instead opting for a standing oration. A few of his audience looked at him expectantly, simply wanting to know what had gone on apparently. Most of the others, including the captain, were glaring; others showed expressions of indifference, disgust, or outright hostility for the RDA administrator. Looking out at their faces and sensing their hostility, Parker was suddenly aware of the very real possibility that something could 'happen' to him while he was in cryosleep. He fought off the sudden shiver that this brought him and regained his focus. Get this over with, he thought.

"…It's been an uncomfortable and dangerous time for all of us, _including_ admin," he emphasized. He heard someone in the back of the room mutter something that sounded like 'yet you live,' but he couldn't see who it was. He continued, "Interrupt me if there's any questions on particulars as I'm going - I'm just going to jump right in here. He paused for a moment, looking down. He took a deep breath and began.

"As some of you might know, our latest satellite geological scans have revealed a massive unobtanium deposit roughly eighty clicks from Hell's Gate. That amount of distance here on Pandora takes some time to cover. We sent out four remote operated dozers about four months ago to rough in a road to the new site, along with a small security detachment of nine SECOPS personnel and two AMP suits.

"Unfortunately, the site was occupied by a Na'vi village." A few members of his audience murmured 'humphs' and shook their heads sensing how it must have gone down."

"But I'm assuming you knew this from the beginning," the ISV captain interrupted. There were low mutters from the assembled crew.

Parker continued, raising his voice slightly to be heard over the low din of the crowd, "We figured that this would give us enough time to figure out what to do about the native population living there. A few weeks later, a new avatar driver named Jake Sully managed to get himself captured by the Na'vi while accompanying one of Grace Augustine's science field trips studying tree bark or something."

One of the men toward the back of the small room interrupted, "Where _is_ Dr. Augustine? She has not uploaded any data packets this week, and her requisition forms are overdue."

"Grace Augustine is dead." This time Parker gave the assembled members of the flight crew a few moments to stop murmuring before pressing on. "She was shot by Quaritch while her, Sully, another avatar driver named Norm Spellman, and a pilot sympathetic to the Na'vi were trying to escape in a stolen Sampson. I'll get to how that happened in a little bit." He paused to allow the assembled personnel to quiet down again, then he continued uncomfortably. "So, so – this avatar driver gets caught by the Na'vi, and it turns out that he's a marine, or ex-marine. But Quaritch and I had hatched a plan to get him in with the Na'vi, so he could feed us information. The plan was to get the Na'vi to accept him, and then, hopefully, to use his position to get them to move to another tree.

"The plan was working pretty good up until last week or so. When we were just about to the site, the dozers encountered our _former_ informant, Sully," Parker emphasized the word, revulsion apparent on his face. He continued, "By this time, it appears that he had switched sides and allied himself with the Na'vi." Parker paused to take a sip of water that he had brought in with him before going on.

"He and his Na'vi girlfriend attacked the camera array on one of the dozers, putting it out of service." Gasps of surprise and shocked looks appeared on the faces of many of the people in the room. "I know, I know – how screwed up is that?" Parker asked with a slight smile on his face. The crowd was beginning to soften slightly, he thought. Parker surveyed the assembly quickly. Someone in the back looked like they started to say something, but stopped.

Selfredge continued, "Maybe an hour later, we got a very brief panicked radio transmission from the SECOPS team that we couldn't understand. And then the dozer operators began losing control of their vehicles one by one. We sent out a recon team shortly after. They discovered nine bodies full of arrows, and burning AMPS and dozers. All the equipment was a loss." Again, murmurs of disgust and discontent rose up through the small room. Parker waited patiently for them to calm down before going on.

Parker continued at length, backtracking a bit, outlining all that had transpired after Jake had begun training to become one of the Omaticaya. His audience remained eerily silent for the remainder of his narrative, only interrupting a few times for additional detail. At the end of Parker's presentation, there was a stunned silence. The expressions of most of his audience members had changed during his two plus hour narrative; most were now confused and angry. The administrator wondered if perhaps now they were slightly less angry with him and more angry with the damn monkeys.

Captain Daily looked up from the notes she had been jotting down during the briefing. She tapped her pen quietly on the plastic table top while looking at Parker, unsure of where to begin picking apart his story. "So…" she began slowly, "you have a planet _full_ of unobtanium ore – so much of it in fact, that there are literally mountains of the stuff floating all over the sky." She began to pick up steam now, with each consecutive statement-question growing slightly in volume and acidity. "So much so, that you could have continued the pit operations at Hell's gate for at least another ten years. Yet _you_ went and sent out bulldozers to plow through a Na'vi sacred site, expecting no reaction from the native population, correct?" Parker sat still, with an indifferent smirk on his face, and nodded.

"Your dozers are then attacked and destroyed, along with your expeditionary force, which, _of course_, you weren't expecting. **You then **_**gassed**_ a Na'vi village of over 1000 people, blew it up, killed maybe half of their population, and expected them to roll over for you?" Snickers came up from around the room, but she continued on nearing a crescendo. "_You_, as the head of RDA on Pandora, allowed your SECOPS colonel to continue unchecked, to wage all-out war on a sovereign people, **on THEIR planet**!" she yelled. **"People who shoot **_**bows and fucking arrows**_** for god sake! All of which resulted in the RDA being evicted from Pandora**". All of her senior staff were staring in disbelief at the outburst from their captain, some had their mouths slightly ajar. At some point during her retort to Parker, she had stood up, though she could not clearly remember when that had been. She glared at Parker, but began to regain her composure somewhat. She straightened her uniform slightly, and slowly, deliberately, sat down in her seat.

"Did I miss anything?" she finally asked levelly, staring at a mute and visibly shaken Parker Selfredge. He said nothing.

The captain continued, this time in a carefully checked, slow, deliberate manner. "Of all the douche bags in all of the history books that will ever be written, Parker, your name will hold a very special place. That is, _if _many more history books are published. You and your moron crony have managed to get the very first sentient alien species that humanity has ever met to despise us to such a degree that they simply _don't care_ if we go extinct. You've made them hate us so much that they don't want us taking a mineral from their world that they have absolutely no use for, but one that probably means life and death for our species. Oh, and then there is the potential that you might just have started the first interstellar war, one which could very well result in genoci – scratch that, xenocide. Oh, and then there's the maybe causing the extinction of humans thing."

The room once again fell silent. All eyes were on Parker. He had looked like he wanted to say something a few times while Captain Daily was giving her diatribe, but he waited until she had finished, less by choice than by her unwillingness to let him defend himself. Now that she had finished thoroughly berating the RDA administrator, Parker glanced around at the assembled faces shiftily. Finally, he took a breath, hesitated for a moment as if thinking to himself, and then stated simply, "I have a plan."


	2. Chapter 1 Aftermath

"Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself."  
_-Froude_

Chapter 1. AFTERMATH

**1.1 Amnesia.**

_Unknown location._

It opened Its eyes, then blinked. Its vision was blurred and Its eyes stung. It couldn't make out details, or see anything clearly. It was disoriented and numb. Where was It? It couldn't recall, but something didn't quite feel right, and everything throbbed painfully. Through the haze-like limitation of Its vision, It could make out that it was was dark; but there was a glow present too. Not clearly resolved light, but what you might expect to see of a glowing object when viewed thought frosted glass. What the hell is frosted glass It wondered briefly, realizing suddenly It was completely immobile. It slowly became aware that there was a weight pressing down on Its shoulder and cheek. But how could It be sure that they were Its shoulder and cheek? It thought that they were, but It had no recollection of ever owning such parts. Was It injured, pinned beneath something? It suddenly came to the realization that It had no memories, which seemed to imply to It that It had had some before. But before when? Before what? It somehow instinctively knew that something had happened to It. But what had happened? Had It done something wrong? Had It caused this, this – state – through some misdeed or carelessness of Its own? It wasn't sure, so it was possible It supposed. Unfortunately, It did not know who or where, or for that matter even _what_ it was, but it felt numb, and had a great need of something.

It was terribly frustrated, and even more frustrated by Its inability to do anything about Its frustration. It could not growl and bare Its fangs; It could not run away. Would It run away in an unknown situation such as this? It was unsure. It was confused – no, confounded; confused would not adequately describe this state. And It was profoundly alone. It knew it had given up everything to be here, in this place. But why would he have done that – only to end up HERE? It made less and less sense the more and more It thought about this. And how could It find her when It was so completely incapacitated. It needed her to fill Its profound emptiness. It knew from the sound It heard - or felt, rather, that Its heart was beating; but it hurt badly. Each beat was unaccompanied, separate, distant; with each beat a dull, throbbing pain permeated Its body. Unlike the dull throb in Its body, the pain in Its heart was not purely physical. It knew that It knew what physical pain was – It had intimately known physical pain… before. Before whatever this was. No, this pain in Its heart was not that, not _physical_ pain – or at least It thought not. After pondering this question for quite some time, It finally recognized the pain, and as It did, the pain grew worse. What It felt in Its heart was desperate, black sadness. It felt like the most hopeless, bottomless depression that It had ever experienced. Even though It could not be one hundred percent certain of this, It imagined that if It died, It would be much better off. Wait – had It died? No, surely not – death could not feel this bad, and Its heart _was_ beating.

It was wounded terribly by the knowledge that she was not here. Who was she, It wondered, and why was she so damned important? Why had she had not come? Or was it that It had not gone? Gone where? Had It tried to go? Its inability to recall her was desperately saddening. Angrily, frantically, It tore at Its own mind for clues to where she might be found, what she looked like, clues as to how It would recognize her. It tried, then failed, time after time, to grab any piece of information from Its mind. Its frustration built with each attempt, collapsing inwardly. Giving up after the last one. It wondered if this was how one died of loneliness. As It lay there paralyzed, painfully pondering this thought, It felt a searing white-hot spot somewhere above Its mind. It focused on the point, but was unable to figure out what it could be. A second, painful burning spot came into existence – somewhat in proximity to the other. Am I being tortured, It wondered? It shuddered at that thought – somehow It knew with certainty exactly what that word meant. While It was thinking about this torture, the world began to shake, slightly at first. But the shaking increased in both its frequency and magnitude. What is going on, It wondered? And what was the heat on Its _face_? – yes! The burning hot points were on Its face – it had a face! As It realized this, a particularly violent quake – (was this an earthquake?) – began, and continued uninterrupted. Wait, It thought, am I even on Earth? It realized that the burning-hot points on its face were now streamers of fire. It felt the face-fire pain-rivers cascade onto Its neck as another violent spasm of quaking tore through It, disabling any useful thought that It had. It withdrew further into Its shell of bleak lonliness. It was then that It realized that It was crying. Uncontrollably crying from the most absolute, disconsolate, painful sense of loss.

It suddenly felt the weight lift from Its shoulder, to be replaced on Its face. The weight was soft, warm. It was also slightly rough; it was moving rapidly over Its face, trying to push aside the fire-tears. It felt a similar warm-weight partially surround it – warmth on Its legs. It could feel Its _legs_! For a reason It could not fully grasp, It knew that being able to feel Its legs was important to It. Somehow, this fact helped lift It out of Its depression somewhat. It felt the warm-weight touch Its shoulder, It felt a warm pressure-band wrap around Its middle, and tug at It repeatedly. It felt a sudden, violent stinging pain on Its face, slightly below Its right eye. It felt the warm-pressure grasp his (shoulders?) simultaneously, and violently shake It for what felt like several minutes. It felt a broad, great weight fall across Its body, and then It felt Its arm involuntarily hosted and then pulled over a big something else warm. But still the quakes came, and still It cried uncontrollably. Had she died? And again It wondered if It had died.

The great warm-weight lifted, and It felt a soft, wet warmth desperately clutching at Its hand. It tried to move Its right hand. It felt like a stone. This thought was strangely comforting to It – at least It knew what a stone was; It had some context, and It knew which was Its right hand! It tried to move his hand again and felt Its fingers bend slightly. It felt a reassuring, distinct, warm pressure when It managed to move them. Yes, It could move his fingers. That meant that he had fingers, which meant that It was a person. It felt the warm something move from his hand back to Its cheek, to try and move some of the tears out of his eyes. The soft warmth remained on his cheek, _his _cheek, and another rough-soft warm pressure grasped _his_ left hand. He knew that _he_ was a he! The touch on his left hand felt familiar and comforting. It felt like a hand also, someone was with him! He was not alone! He felt red hot points of fire appear suddenly, one by one, on his upper body accompanied by the soft, firm thuds of their impact, as if it were raining. He could vaguely remember what rain was, but rain is not hot, he thought. Someone was crying over him. A sudden, vastly important realization filled his growing mind; it was the most profound and blissful thought that he thought he had ever had. He stopped crying and the quakes subsided. He knew. It was her – she was here comforting him. She was crying over his body. But why should he need comfort? He turned back to his earlier thoughts of being injured, or worse. He suddenly became aware of a loud buzzing in both of his ears. Yes, he realized, he had ears! There was something else behind the buzzing too. He couldn't understand at first what it was, but he knew it was much more important than the buzzing sound. Was it a voice, could he hear someone's voice – voices? Were there more than one – a cacophony? Were there more than one? Many voices - in some kind of cadence? The nearest voice was familiar, it was _Her_ voice! Calling his name! His _name_ was Jake! His mind sung in jubilation at this knowledge.

'Am I injured?' Jake thought. 'Why can't I see her! 'AAAAAARARRRRGGGHHHHH!' he screamed silently within his own mind. 'I'm so fucking frustrated that I can't stand this fucking shit anymore' – 'why the hell am I being tortured like this' – 'what have I done to deserve this' – 'why can't I see out of my open friggin' eyes' – 'why can't I see!' Why can't I remember before!' Thoughts began to flow through his mind faster and faster, and he was unable to control them. He was not even in control of what thoughts he was thinking. It was as if he wasn't driving his own body. 'Stop torturing me' – 'I want to wake up' – 'I want to know who I am' – 'I want to be with her' – 'I want to be here with her' – 'I want her forever' – 'I want my mate' – 'I want to see my mate' – 'I want to care for her…' His vision began to brighten around the edges, as this train of continuous thoughts poured through his mind unimpeded like an angry roiling gray tempest. He felt small pressures alighting his body – and he was sure she was crying again. 'NO!' he screamed in his head, 'Don't cry!' he thought. Small gentle points continued to land on him despite his anguished appeals for them to stop, seemingly more than one person could cry – were other people crying over him? 'I want her so badly' – 'I want to climb into her arms' – 'I need to be with her' – 'I need to hold her' – 'I need… _wait_…' and then it all slowed down, almost to a stop. The world was in extreme slow motion now. He could feel every pore of his body. He could feel the intermittent streams of sweat being peristaltically expelled by each of his sweat glands. He could feel the gentle breeze in this place brush over each inch of his skin. He could feel the random landing of each of her tears(?) slowly, gently landing on his torso. They landed on his arms and his legs as well; but they were no longer warm, and they had less mass than before, and no thud as they fell down onto him. They seemed to 'stick' to him he thought, which was odd. The buzzing in his ears began to rapidly fade, and in a single, abrupt instant the voices became lucid. She was crying, uncontrollably; and calling to him, like he had just died and she could not accept it. A shiver ran in slow motion down his spine from the base of his queue to the very last hair on the tip of his tail; Jake could feel every single goose bump form and then subside. 'I am here, she loves me, and she is… Neytiri,' he finally, _finally_ understood. She had been by his side through his whole ordeal. But what was this ordeal? He was slowly, deliberately, remembering himself back into being. His memories began to flood back into his brain. He remembered being a crippled ex-marine, he remembered the death of his brother, leaving Earth, he remembered coming to Pandora. Meeting her, falling in love, mating with her, living, escaping, betraying, loosing, redeeming, defeating, and nearly dying. He knew where he was now, and why, even though he couldn't see. He had saved The People, and now they were saving him. 'Toruk Macto and all that crap,' he thought.

'CRAP, INDEED,' a non-Jake, non-voice clearly echoed his last thought within his own mind. He was so desperate to go to her now, but still his body remained in paralysis. He could still feel the small gentle pin-pricks landing on his skin, and he wanted desperately to put a halt to her tears! He could hear her, goddamn it! She was as desperate as he was – he MUST get to her! How could this be! This has to be the worst thing another thing could do to a person.

'Calm down, Marine.' Again, he shivered. He knew the non-voice, it was his friend, his dead friend. His heart sank back down. He must have died.

'Relax marine, you're not dead…' she said. It was soothing to hear her voice, but a thousand questions began to form in his mind. '…and you are welcome for what it is that you just complained about. You will understand shortly. I'm sorry this was so uncomfortable for you, but it is, unfortunately, a necessary part of the process.'

'Grace, I have a million questions to ask you,' Jake thought.

'Sorry my friend, not this time. This is not a time for questions," Grace began, 'just listen to what I have to tell you and then we'll get you back to your mate.

'Jake, the time of sorrow is not over. It will be an extended, miserable time for The People, punctuated with both peace and destruction intermittently. You are now, truly, one of the Omaticaya. I am so very proud of you, Jake. But, I cannot tell you what you must do, because it will change what you would or _would not_ do, and then you won't do what it is that you must to save The People. Don't speak I said, just listen, Jesus marine, don't you ever listen?' Jake smiled to himself, but he felt his body smile too. At the same time he also heard his Neytiri stop crying. She called his name, clearly and longingly. He felt the whispy-soft pin-pricks stop landing on his flesh, but there was still something on his skin – it felt as if his skin was crawling, 'drying tears,' he wondered.

'Attention,' she snapped again in her best attempt at a military 'voice'. 'This is incredibly important, marine – don't blow this!' Grace said inside Jake's head. 'You will have to make a decision that will be the most difficult decision any person in the existence of Eywa has ever had to make, Jake."

"Ma Jake, please! Jake, rutxe za'u ne'ìm ne oe," Neytiri pleaded inches from his face. He could feel her breath against his skin. He could smell it too – god, he thought, how long had this been going on? It was just a bit on the stale side.

Grace continued in Jakes brain, 'There will be on the one hand, someone who you love desperately, and on the other, many thousands of People whom you do not know.'

"Jake! Oe kin nga. Oe tsun ke rey txo nga si ke!" She was crying again.

'This you must do for the good of all Eywa's creatures.'

"My Jake!" She yelled in my ear, shaking me by my shoulders. "I love you Jake," she sobbed softly, tears once again falling on his chest.

'If you do not, we will all of us cease to exist,' Grace said, releasing him.

"**How will I know what it is that I must do**?" Jake yelled aloud to no one through his suddenly working mouth.

His vision cleared rapidly. The first thing he saw was Mo'at standing over him, weeping as she had when their home had fallen – when Eytukan had died. His eyes must have been open the whole time, because they stung badly. She noticed his consciousness return to his eyes as soon as he noticed he was conscious. A profuse glow radiated from his body, one he recognized from months earlier. He glanced down to see what had been landing on him. Jake saw more Atokirina than he had ever seen in one place, ever, clinging to his body. Every inch of his flesh was covered with them; they were nearly in his eyes, in his nostrils. Neytiri was kneeling over him, and where she had her hand on his arm, the atokirina had completely covered her hand as well. They were encasing his entire body. He marveled at their numbers for a moment. Then Jake looked up into his mate's beautiful, large, gold and bloodshot eyes.

"Oel ngati kmeie, my love" he whispered hoarsely to his mate. She nodded and smiled broadly, tears welling up once again in her large golden eyes, unable to return his greeting. Jake lifted his suddenly functional arm and placed his hand gently over Neytiri's heart. The atokirina, in unison, took to the air immediately above them, and seemed to loiter there, as if awaiting something.

Jake was taken aback by the sheer number of them in the air overhead. They completely illuminated everything around them, casting an unnatural light for this part of the night. There must be thousands of them, he thought. The Atokirina seemed to jostle for position; there was scarcely air for them to swim through next to one another without become entangled in each other's rhythmically beating rays. Jake looked from the atokirina swarm first to the smiling, crying wreck that was Neytiri, then to Mo'at, and then back to Neytiri. "How long was I out?" he croaked quietly to anyone who would answer.

Mo'at looked at Jake with knowing in her eyes, "Long enough for Eywa to tell you what you must do for The People," she said reverently. "We will talk of this later." Mo'at smiled broadly at Jakesully's confused look and raised her arms to the crowd of Omaticaya who had remained silent for much of the strange ordeal.

["People, I present your new olo'eyktan, Toruk Makto – Jakesully!"] Raucous cries erupted from the assembled Na'vi, and the throng of atokirina suddenly began ascending into the tree of souls.

* * *

**1.2 Epimethus.**

_Computer Lab – ISV Venture Star_

It had been over a week since parker had transmitted his message to both the incoming ISV's and to Earth. It would be at least a seven months until the message would be received by the ISV Centauri Enterprise, and four years three months until it would reach Earth. The Centauri Enterprise was still a little over a light year out, and would not begin decelerating for another ten months. The coded message he had sent would be received in the Sol system by an RDA optical array in orbit between Saturn and Uranus, converted to a 4096-bit encrypted cipher, and re-transmitted via laser to an RDA satellite in high Earth orbit. The satellite would then retransmit the message via high energy pulse laser directly to a receiver atop RDA's global headquarters in San Francisco. The encryption method used was supposedly unbreakable, and transmitting in the highly coherent optical band helped to further ensured that the message would only be received by the party it was intended for. Parker's message contained the preliminary report that he and the command staff had assembled, along with an outline of his current plan. There were a great many unhappy members among the Venture Star's command, but they all realized the gravity of the situation: if they failed, humanity would almost certainly perish. That was not something that Parker was willing to accept. The hazardous duty pay Parker had promised also helped grease the gears somewhat.

Parker stared at the terminal in front of him, glancing at the crew manifest of the Centauri Enterprise. Mostly miners and support staff. He sighed aloud. Of the one-hundred and one people aboard that were slated to end up at Hell's Gate, fifty-four were non-military types: seventeen miners, eight ROV drivers, eleven mechanics, four operations/control, nine refinery workers, three researchers, and two avatar drivers. More importantly, there were only forty-seven SECOPS personnel aboard the inbound ISV: twenty-nine 'Security Specialists,' grunts, as the infantry-types were informally known, sixteen pilots, and two RDA Security Officers. Parker stared at the wall for a moment as he considered the meager SECOPS detail.

"Ronnie?" Parker remained seated, but turned his gaze from the steel-gray wall to his operations director on the other side of the room.

"Yeah boss?" he replied, looking up through thick glasses from a pair of curved, transparent monitors displaying logistical and inventory items.

"How many SECOPS people do we have on board the Venture Star?" Parker asked.

Ronnie Newsom was a slightly overweight, balding, middle-aged man with grey hair. He wore a white and very pale blue pinstriped button-up shirt, with the cuffs rolled up his forearms and a pair of faded jeans. Selfridge knew the man had been on Pandora for quite a while; he had been there when Parker took over as head administrator more than four years ago. He turned back to his terminal and punched a few keys. One of his two large displays changed, and he scanned the information quickly, with a practiced eye.

"Looks like we got fifty-one, counting all living security operations personnel. But, boss, over half of them are pretty seriously injured," the operations director said. "And out of all the SECOPS people we got, I'm not sure exactly how many will be willing to go back down yet," he said, knowing where Parker was heading.

Parker turned back, regard the wall once again, reclining in his chair as he did so. The ISV Centauri Enterprise was still over a year out, Parker though. That would give the remaining SECOPS personnel plenty of time to heal. _If _they would all fight, and Parker thought he could work that through either additional pay incentives or promotions, that would give them a total fighting force of ninety-eight, including inbound personnel. They had gotten their butts kicked with far, far more than that, by an enemy force armed with Neolithic technology. He frowned at this last thought. What really cost them the battle, though, was not Sully. Augustine had been right, he thought. He sat upright in his chair and wheeled closer to his terminal.

Looking at his display again, Parker pressed a few keys, bringing up the cargo manifest of the inbound ISV. Scrolling down through the list, he noted three new AT-99 Scorpions, three new SA-2 Samsons, two spare Samson rotor assemblies, spare parts, and munitions. _A lot _of munitions. Good, he thought, continuing down the list. Ten new Mitsubishi MK-6 Amplified Mobility Platforms, and ten each arm and leg servo actuators. More AMP spare parts. Six Lockheed-Saab LF-78v's. Parker stopped after reading this last entry. What the hell is an LF-78v he wondered to himself. These were not any platform he was familiar with. He continued reading. Three LF-78v GE CT-17 turboprop engine assemblies. Three LF-78v landing gear assemblies, three LF-78v canopy assemblies, four LF-78v canard wings, four LF-78v canard actuators. Parker skimmed through much of the remaining inventory items, distracted. Lots of spare parts for whatever this LF-78v was.

"Ronnie, any idea what a Lockheed-Saab LF-78v is?" Parker asked.

"No, boss. I saw that too and was going to ask you about it. I assume you're looking over the inventory of the incoming ISV?"

"Yeah. Hey - don't they usually send documents a year or two ahead of new weapon platform roll-outs so mechanics will be up to speed with the new parts and stuff?" Parker asked.

"Usually, yeah, boss. But, if it's something completely new, and not rotor-wing based, they may have just sent trained techs with the equipment. I assume you've looked through the crew manifest?"

"Yeah, I did," Parker said.

"Did you notice all the 'mechanics' on the list?"

"Yeah, so?"

"Well, usually, we only get three or four mechanics, techs, whatever you wanna call 'em, _per_ ISV." Ronnie paused, then looked up at Parker, "Whatever they are, boss, there are alot of dedicated techies for them."

Parker wondered about this new platform for a minute. Then he got up from his desk and walked to the other side of the room to look out of the small viewing window. The external shutter was open, and even with the protective film on the glass, natural light filled the narrow room. Parker knew he wouldn't be able to look out for long – it was very disorienting for him to be in a moving room trying to look at a stationary object, and not be overcome by a debilitating motion sickness. The room they occupied was in one of the twin artificial gravity modules that rotated about the axial spine of the ISV. These spacecraft, like others that had come before them, created simulated gravity by rotating some kind of habitable compartment around an axis. Through this application of centrifugal force, everything contained within the ISV's twin rotating simulated gravity modules was constantly being flung against the outer wall, which became the floor. It was all very seamless as long as your frame of reference was within the walls of the space. When Parker looked out of the window at the moon below, he suddenly became acutely aware of the fact that he was in a rotating drum. His personal sense of space became unstable, with up and down momentarily confused. Parker regained his orientation long enough to look at the moon below them. He knew that they were approaching a high orbit around Epimetheus, another of Polyphemus' large moons.

Parker vaguely recalled the myth from his university gened classics studies. The titans Epimetheus and Prometheus had been ordered by Zeus to give gifts to all of the animals of Earth. When they got to man, however, Epimetheus had run out of gifts. Prometheus stole fire from the gods to give as a gift to man, which pissed Zeus off, Parker recalled. Zeus punished both Prometheus and man; Prometheus got to have his liver pecked out by a large eagle every day for all eternity, but Zeus was more devious with man. Zeus had Pandora made, and then trained by the gods to be both exceptionally beautiful and deceitful. Zeus then gave her a large jug, into which he placed toil, hardship, and illness, and had her sent as a gift to Epimetheus. Of course that idiot Epimetheus couldn't keep from looking in that damned jug, Parker thought to himself, and mankind has been living unhappily ever since.

Parker gripped the wall as Epimetheus came into rotation and a wave of queasiness came over him. He had to look up through the small window to see it at first; the rotation of the SIMGRAV modules were clockwise, and because they were standing on the 'ceiling', their rotation would make any stationary object appear far overhead and disappear far below your feet – over and over and over again. The moon itself was rather typical for one of the larger inner moons of Polyphemus – a thick atmosphere of noxious gasses that would kill an unmasked human in just a minute or two. Parker looked uneasily at the gray-blue cloud covered moon as the SIMGRAV module swung it into full view.

"Eliza, give me the specs on Epimetheus again, please," Parker asked in a subtly authoritative tone. He had had to remind some of the RDA employees that had been forcibly evicted from Pandora of a few facts relevant to their present situation. 'Listen,' Parker had said to them, 'If we fail here, the Earth _will_, almost certainly die.' The same grumblings and hostility present in his command staff briefing had reared up again in the general staff meeting five days ago. 'I don't like this, this… situation… any more than any of you do. We have to find a way to keep the unobtanium flowing back to Earth. If we don't, our family and friends – everyone we've ever known or cared about,' he had paused for effect, 'is dead.' For the most part, his briefing had been successful. He had managed to galvanize the majority of the remaining RDA employees into accepting, or in many cases, even openly supporting staying in the Alpha Centauri system. And extra pay, he thought. ALOT of extra pay.

"Diameter, 9854 kilometers,…" the young RDA air traffic controller began. Eliza Moen looked as if she were in her late 20's Parker thought, but he knew she was 37 from her personnel file. She was a not unattractive woman, taller, and a bit more buxom than he generally preferred, but he thought to himself as he watched her speak that he would, in fact, do her. Not that she would ever have that, he half-lamented. "…mass 31.8 times ten to the 16th kilograms…"

"Which is a lot, I know," Parker interrupted, looking annoyed. "I don't care about orbital period and all that crap. Will you just please give me a rundown of the surface, you know, stuff we can use. Like, what's atmosphere like, what kind of vegetation – that kind of stuff."

Eliza shot back Parker's annoyed look. "If you mean, 'is there anything there that will kick your ass off Epimetheus,' the answer is no." Her gaze shifted from Parker to Ronnie, who had a slightly amused look on his face. She looked back at Parker, then down at her display and continued, "Atmosphere similar to Pandora's, but slightly more methane and H2S. A bit less O2 and higher CO2. All other gasses in similar concentrations to Pandora."

"So it's not good to breathe?" Parker chided.

"No. Will kill you slightly faster than Pandora's air will. Plenty of liquid water on the surface, although the pH of the oceans is quite low because of the high CO2 levels, so the seawater is corrosive." She looked up at Parker, "There are also quite a few volcanoes. That's what keeps the CO2, H2S, and methane high I would guess…"

"I'm not paying you to guess," Parker interrupted.

She scowled slightly and continued. "Surface variably vegetated, A few animal species known. Not much is known about them, though. Most appear small compared with Pandoran animals. The reports note that at least some of the animal species should be edible. A preliminary geological scan revealed that unobtanium is present on Epimetheus," she said, pausing to see Parker's reaction to this bit of information. Seeing none, she went on, "But apparently not in concentrations sufficient to attract the _immediate_ attention of the RDA. That's about it – there was only one scouting expedition here. They must have given up quick on Epimetheus when they came across Pandora."

"Well, I doubt we'll need to go down unless our new scans show something out of the ordinary, but good to know what we have under our feet, just in…"

A loud buzz interrupted Parker, followed by a whistle that changed tone a few times. "Attention all personnel, the Venture Star has now entered geosynchronous orbit around Epimetheus. All non-essential off-duty personnel may leave their duty stations." The buzz-whistle combination followed again.

"Damn, that's annoying," Parker mumbled to himself. Then louder, to his staff, "Alright people, let's get going. Everyone's got a job, let's get to it." Parker watched as the six other people in the room busily returned to work.

* * *

**1.3 The guest.**

_Tree of Souls, exterior, day._

"Wow, Jake, that was tense," Norm said through his exopack as he arrived at Jake and Neytiri's makeshift 'camp'. Norm was the only human the Na'vi trusted enough to be at the transfer. He had fought alongside The People in the 'Txan Tsam 'Aw Trr' as he had heard the battle referred to a few times now. His participation in their 'Great War of One Day' had earned him a place of endearment among the Na'vi. Most of The People not only recognized Norm, but most greeted the only human many of them had ever seen with respect and kindness. Those who knew his name called him by that, but other People had taken to calling him 'frrtu', or guest. It was far better than being called tawtute or uniltiranyu. Probably had to do with the vastly exaggerated tales of his valor in battle, Norm thought. "How are you feeling this morning?" he asked as he sat down on a large natural rock bench next to Jake.

"You mean other than this throbbing headache?" Jake asked his friend, smiling slightly. He paused a moment, apparently reflecting on something. "I thought I'd feel different somehow, ya know? Right now, the only thing that feels different is that everything hurts," Jake lied, looking away from Norm and out over the Na'vi encampment. The other clans had already returned to their homes – only their injured, people that could not yet travel long distances, still remained with the Omaticaya. These People gave the encampment an artificially inflated population. When the injured left, Jake thought to himself, they would truly see the damage that had been done by the war. Perhaps some of the injured warriors from the other clans would choose to stay among the Omaticaya. Some of the injured warriors had apparently taken to the younger unmated female healers, Jake had noted.

"Well, just be glad that you have a head _to_ ache," Norm said. It had only been nine days since the battle to reclaim Pandora from the humans had ended. Norm looked down, remembering the insufferable pain that had rendered him unconscious during the fighting. That was not the only thing bothering him though – he had spent a lot of his time lately thinking about the fact that he had probably been responsible for killing some of his fellow humans. Norm's expression made his unpleasant thoughts obvious.

"Norm," Jake asked quietly, "how is your other body doing?"

Norm tried to push back the wave of emotion that was threatening to break over him, jumping back into the conversation. "The left shoulder's a wreck," he said flatly. "The scapula is shattered, and the ball of my left humerus is also damaged." Norm looked a little worried, but continued. "Max thinks I'll…" he paused, then shook his head slightly and sighed before continuing "…I mean _IT_ will recover. It will take a while, though. The shoulder will need extensive orthopedic surgeries to reconstruct the damaged joint. Max has already started working on the scapula. He had to dig out a bullet fragment and put bone graft matrix over the three or four chunks of the scapula. We have to give that a couple of weeks to take and then he's going to do a ball replacement on the humerus end. The tricky part will be the socket. One of the bullets went right through the joint – it literally split them. So both the ball and the socket are messed up. Max and one of the avatar docs rebuilt the socket as well as they could, but it's still a mess. When it's healed up a bit more and they go back in to do the socket replacement, they're going to use an orthopedic polymer to reline the socket. Hopefully, that'll do it."

Jake put his hand on his friends shoulder, "Well, Norm, it could have been a lot worse."

"Well, it's no going to be any fun. I have to link in on a regular basis to exercise my avatar body so the muscles don't atrophy. I've already gone in once. It was – unpleasant," Norm said, grimacing slightly. "The pain meds we have for the avatars suck. So, _if_ all of the reconstructive stuff works, I'll be doing physical therapy for quite some time – _and_ there's no guarantee that the joint will ever work right – or at all."

"I'll ask the healers what we have for pain. I know there is this kind of greenish paste stuff that they put on the more serious wounds. It seems to work pretty fast, too – I've seen People with some pretty serious gashes up and about just a couple of minutes after getting this stuff."

Norm looked up, "Thanks, Jake. It would really help if I wasn't dreading linking in." Norm paused for a second, looking pensive. "I want to get back into my avatar body so badly, but it hurts so frigging much. I know I should be worried that I miss it so much. It's like a drug, you know?" He was sure that he hadn't needed to ask Jake this question as soon as it had come out of his mouth.

"And now you're going through withdrawl," Jake nodded sympathetically. "I've had that monkey on my back twice now Norm. The first time was when I was injured. I woke up in that VA hospital not feeling a thing. Then I tried to move. Big mistake. My thoracic spine was shattered between the 9th and 11th vertebrae, and I also felt 'ghost pain' from my legs, too. They had me on some serious dope for a long time. So long that they had to gradually weed me off of it in conjunction with substance abuse counseling. I was _not _a happy camper." He looked down at his friend sitting next to him with a slight empathetic smile, "The second time was when I got my legs back." Jake smiled a bit more broadly as he added this last part.

"I don't blame you for that," Norm said. "I can't imagine what you must have gone through." There was an awkwardly long silence between the two friends. Norm looked at his feet for a few seconds, then off to his right where three Na'vi children were playing ten or so meters away; Jake was also sitting on his right.

Norm sighed, finally finding what he needed to continue, "You know, we buried your body near Grace's," he said uncomfortably, pausing again. "I wasn't sure how I was going to react, and I embarrassed myself in front of Mo'at badly, I think. And Neytiri. And some of the other warriors."

Jake looked like he was afraid to ask, but he did anyways, "What happened, Norm?"

"I was overcome with emotion. I was thinking about all of the destruction we've caused – we humans. And about Trudy." Norm was visibly upset now. "All of my emotions, everything I'd been carrying around for the last few days – all of the frustration that I had bottled up while dealing with the people we shipped out – It just…"

"Norm, did you cry at my funeral?" Jake interrupted. He tried not to smile too broadly, but couldn't help smiling a little.

"Yeah," Norm replied weakly, not looking up.

Jake looked into his friend's face. "Thanks Norm, you're a good friend," Jake began, "I don't know how I would have gotten through this if it weren't for support from you and Neytiri. So many good people gave their lives to make this right. Grace, Trudy, Tsu'tey…" he trailed off, looking contemplative. After a few seconds, he looked down at the small human next to him. "Norm, you're my best friend."

Norm considered Jake's words. "You know, I guess you're mine too," Norm stated. Then, as he saw Jake make an exaggerated half-smile-half-scowl, added "Wow, that sounded less than emphatic. Sorry, I guess I'm still down about Trudy."

"I'm sorry Norm. I guess I didn't really know that you two had gotten close. I was kinda in my own little world over the last three months."

"Hey, don't worry about it. I just wish we could find her body," he said looking down. "I never realized how hard finding a wrecked helicopter could be in a rainforest."

"I'll check in with the search parties in a little while," Jake said softly to his friend. Then, after a pause, he asked "So, what happened at my funeral?"

"Well, I broke down," Norm laughed. "Some of the warriors dug a hole near the base of the tree near where Mo'at, some of the others and I had buried Grace. Neytiri kissed your forehead and each hand and then Mo'at said a blessing over your body, and then led a prayer to Eywa." Norm looked over his left shoulder toward the Tree of Souls. He pointed to a spot about ten meters to the right of the base of the tree, to a small patch of fresh soil.

"That's where your body is," Norm said quietly. "Neytiri and Mo'at placed your body very respectfully into the hole and put you into a curled up, kinda fetal position. I know from my studies, and from Grace's funeral that, usually, an atokirina is put into the grave with a Person. I think that both Mo'at and Neytiri were a bit taken aback when four or five atokirina went into your grave on their own." Norm looked over at his friend, "You know, Mo'at asked me if there was anything that should be done for you, you know – from a human religious perspective. I didn't know what to do, what your denomination was – _is_, rather." Norm looked uncomfortable again. "So, I just said a few words, did an 'Our Father,' then said a short prayer to Eywa.

"You did good, Norm. I'm not really religious. I was brought up Roman Catholic, or at least that's what my parents were. I never saw the point. I guess I've been more or less agnostic my whole life."

Norm looked less uncomfortable with Jake's last statement. "Phew, I'm glad I didn't mess anything up." Norm paused for a moment. When he continued, he tilted his head slightly and had a subtle smile at the corners of his mouth, "So, a little bird tells me you saw Grace during the transfer."

"Hmmm – that didn't happen to be a bluebird by any chance?"

"Uh-huh!" Norm affirmed with a quiet chuckle.

"Well, she lied to you then. I didn't _see_ Grace – I more kind of _heard_ her," Jake emphasized. "But now I'm not entirely sure I heard her, either. It was like she was inside of my head talking to me. But not coming from my head, either." Jake was clearly struggling to find words to explain what had happened during the transfer. "I mean, I wasn't thinking what she was saying – I was startled every time she talked, or whatever it was. But I remember knowing immediately who it was. It's really hard for me to explain this Norm."

"No, no – I think I got it, Jake," Norm said quietly, suddenly looking up at his friend. "It kinda makes sense that if Eywa had something to tell you, that she would do it through someone who you would recognize. And trust," Norm added. "Neytiri told me, after you passed out last night, that she thought you talked to Eywa through Grace. What did she say to you if you don't mind me asking?"

"Norm, I'm not entirely sure yet myself. She was very – cryptic. And I was very distracted. I had just got my hearing back when she started _talking _to me. And I had just remembered who I was. And I was…" Jake paused, in thought. "…incredibly lonely, and desperate at the same time – it seemed to take a _long_ time, Norm," Jake stressed. "It felt like it took a month, and I just wanted to see Neytiri. Hell, I had just remembered who she was, but at the same time I knew who she was and needed to see her bad. So, when Grace started talking to me, I was kinda torn – distracted, inside of my own head. On one hand, I was trying to reach out to Neytiri, listening to her every word – and she was upset and crying, even more of a distraction. On the other hand, there's Grace in my head, trying to give me this message from Eywa." Jake looked slightly amused, then started laughing.

Norm smiled at his friend's outburst. "What's so funny?" he asked.

"Grace," Jake giggled to himself. "She had to keep trying to get my attention by trying to impersonate a drill sergeant. It was really pretty funny. I guess you had to be there," Jake said looking at his friend with a grin.

"So – what did she say?" Norm asked again.

"She told me that the time of sorrow isn't over, and that I am going to have to make the most difficult decision that anyone on Pandora has ever had to make, _ever_."

"Whoa – that's heavy," Norm said with a look of stunned distress on his face. He appeared to be in thought for a few minutes, staring idly at a point in space somewhere between himself and the volcanic rock floor of the Well of Souls a few meters away. "No wonder Eywa chose someone you trusted to bring that kind of a message," Norm finally empathized. "Did she give you any details, or was it just non-specific like that?" he asked as he turned to look at his friend again.

In the minute or two that Norm had been contemplating Eywa's message, Jake's demeanor had completely changed. His smile was completely gone, replaced by pained expression. His eyes were slightly glazed over, and he looked like he was struggling internally with something. It was his turn to look down at his feet. Jake was unsure of exactly what the message had meant. Grace or Eywa or whoever, had been deliberately, infuriatingly nonspecific. The more Jake thought about the message, the more upset he became. Even though he didn't know exactly what the message meant, even though he wasn't sure what it was he had to do – one thing terrified him more than anything else he had known. He could fight the humans – he had done so as a jarhead back on Earth, and he had fought them here on Pandora now, too. He had killed his own race in defense of another, to which he had only been an outsider at the time – a dreamwalker, _uniltiranyu_. Even though the humans had been terribly unjust to the Na'vi, they were the race of his birth. _Jake_. It was wrong what humanity had done here, they did not See, they did not know what they were doing was so painful – no, he thought, they did not care! They could not be allowed to destroy a second paradise. _JAKE!_ Not one with her in it – HE would not allow them...

"**JAKE**!" Norm yelled for the third time, finally getting his friend's attention. "Jake, you're knuckles are turning… pale blue!" Norm put his hand on his friend's shoulder. "You ok buddy? What's going on Jake – was there something else?"

Jake looked down at his hands. They were clenched into fists. He tried to relaxed a little – tried to shrug off some of his unease. "_The _most difficult decision. Ever. Norm, Grace told me I was going to have to sacrifice one of the People to save thousands." Jake stopped speaking, and turned his head to face Norm. He looked into his friends eyes. "I could feel her sadness, Norm."

Norm looked down at Jakes hands again. His fists were no longer clenched, but his hands were trembling slightly. He could not recall ever having seen Jake not in some kind of control of a situation – with last night's ceremony a notable exception. Jake had always known what to do, even if he hadn't realized it at the time. He always dove in to whatever the situation presented without fear, and always managed to come out ahead. Norm could sense his fear now – it was tangible; it filled the space between the two men with a murkiness that choked out their words.

Norm slowly began to shake his head as realization sank in. His funeral-wearied bloodshot eyes began to well up. Norm turned his body to search the terrain to his left for a familiar form. Through the slightly fogged face shield of his exopack, he saw her talking with Mo'at beneath the Tree of Souls, perhaps seventy-five meters away. She turned to look at them briefly from the base of the tree, then returned to her conversation.

Norm turned back to look at his friend. "No, Jake," he breathed, a tear trailing down his right cheek. "No."

* * *

Mo'at and Neytiri had been talking under the Tree of Souls for some time. The two matriarchs of the Omaticaya had been discussing arrangements for funeral rites, hunting party assignments, the new remains being brought back to the Well of Souls by search and recovery teams, and trying to figure out which relatives to try and summon for possible identifications. Both women looked haggard, but they knew it would be some time before rest would come.

"[My daughter," Mo'at said changing the subject, "something is not right with Jakesuley. He must regain his Sight soon, The People have a great need of Olo'eyctan.]"

Neytiri knew instinctively what her mother was referring to. She closed her eyes and sighed loudly, then turned to look out toward Jake and Norm. They were quite a distance away, but Neytiri could feel her mate's unease. Both her Jake and Nor'man were looking back at her. "[Yes, I know mother. I have asked him of it, but he does not want to talk about whatever bothers him,]" she said turning back toward the older woman. At first she thought that Jake was saddened by the death of his small, damaged human body. She recalled how unready she had been to witness Jake's human body stop breathing. How lovingly she had cared for his empty human body. She had given Jake's human body a place of honor and great respect, close to the mother tree. Next to the body of his friend. Many People came to show their grief for the death of half of Toruk Makto. His human body had been mourned as a hero. He _was_ a hero. _The atokirina_, she recalled.

When she had talked with Jake earlier this morning, after he had awakened from his first ever dreaming sleep within his Na'vi body, her Jake had assured her he was happy with finally, truly becoming one of The People. Even so, Neytiri was certain he was hiding something from her. Jake woke from his first sleep in a cold sweat, looking – uncertain?

"[Mother, what did Jake tell you of his journey through Eywa's eye?]"

"[Has he not spoken of it to you, my daughter?]" Mo'at asked, raising her right eyebrow quizzically.

"[Yes, he has mother," Neytiri began, "but I feel that there is a part of it that he has deliberately left out.]" She looked at her mother, hoping the older and wiser woman could give her guidance.

"[Jakesuley described to me a time of great confusion, of unknowing who he was. He told me of how this confused-time seemed to last for a great many days, and how he had to 'remember himself into being' on his own words" Mo'at looked into her daughter's huge golden eyes, "This he has told you?]" she asked.

"[Yes, mother, this much he has told me. He has also told me that when he began to become himself once more, that he heard the voice of doc'tor Augustine in his head."]

"[Yes, my daughter, Eywa often takes the form or voice of someone familiar to us when she speaks to us. It is best if we are not distressed by her presence when she tries to tell us of her will. But this you already know. He told me also of his conversation with Eywa," Mo'at told the future Tsahik. "Your Jakesuley talked of what you have said already. But there was something else. He spoke of Eywa's warning to him. That he would have to make the most terrible decision. He became – what is the word in 'Ìnglìsì…" Mo'at thought for a moment, recalling the teachings of Grace Augustine. She had been a kind woman, kind to The People, Mo'at thought. She had seen Grace a few times when she had been less than kind with her fellow tawtute, but she had always been kind to the people. Even when the incident at the school had happened – even when Mo'at had lost her oldest daughter, doc'tor Augustine had tried to keep harm from happening to the Na'vi. Mo'at thought that the reason she was still here, that she was still alive – the reason that all Omaticaya were still alive was because of Grace. She had talked the Na'vi out of all-out war, and Mo'at was certain she had done the same on the other side. Mo'at Saw now, that had the Na'vi undertaken a war without Jakesuley, it would have ended very badly. Then, she recalled the 'Ìnglìsì word she was after. "…in co'horent,]" the Tsahik finished after a very long pause.

Neytiri smiled at her mother's mis-remembered 'Ìnglìsì word, "in'coherent, sa'nok."

"[Yes, my daughter, I thank you for the word," Mo'at grinned slightly. "I could get nothing out of him of what he must do for The People, however. He is deeply distressed and truly confused. I sense something else in him also. A very deep, complete fear. This I have never felt from Jalesuley before now, even in the time just before the battle with the Sky People.]"

Neytiri looked up at her mother, and then glanced over at where Jake and Norm had been sitting a few minutes earlier. They were nowhere to be seen now. "[Mother, I too have sensed this change in him, and it worries me greatly. Jake must focus for the good of the clan now. We must find a new home before much passes. But what if the Sky People return before we can recover from our losses?" Neytiri asked the Tsahik. "Mother, I think he was told something of our fate.]"

Neytiri paused to take in the sights surrounding them. They had performed at least ten burials daily for the last seven days; Mo'at had performed many more than this number while Neytiri had been helping Jake send the Sky People home. All around her were broken families. Mothers and fathers mourned their fallen sons or daughters. Wounded People of several clans milled about. Hunters who could no longer hunt. Missing family members. Rotting, putrid corpses out in the jungle who were not recognizable because their lower jaws or their entire faces had been blown away. Or because they were burned so completely no one could tell who they were. Death did not frighten her Jake – it did not frighten her either. She would gladly give her life to defend her world from the humans. Yet her Jake was fearful of something, and, for whatever reason, he could not tell her why.

"If my Jake is afraid of something, mother," Neytiri began, looking into her mother's eyes, "then there is a reason to be truly frightened.]" She scanned the Well of Souls for Nor'man. Perhaps he would know what troubled her mate.

* * *

**1.4 Dream.**

_Tree of Souls Encampment, exterior, past midnight._

Jake had been awakened by sounds of dreaming coming from his mate. He turned his head toward her, trying to see if she was awake or not. A small whimper, much like the sounds made by Earth puppies, came from her throat. The sound was also reminiscent of the cries made by newborn nantang. It was funny, Jake thought, that such a similar sound was made by two completely unrelated animals – one on Earth, trillions of miles away, and one here, out in the glowing blue night. He listened for a moment, and heard the calls of a few nantang far off in the distance. The distant wails he heard were their baboon-like pack-hunting calls, he though, and not the innocent whimpers of their young.

He turned so that his body was facing that of his mate, and propped his head up on his elbow so he could watch her dream for awhile. She was still again, making no sound except for even, deep, rhythmical breathing. Jake glanced around. No one was up in the Omaticaya's provisional encampment except for the hunters who had been posted as guards around the periphery of the Well of Souls. He looked up at the lip of the caldera that formed the Well, and was satisfied to see the silhouettes of two or three Na'vi standing guard over them. The Na'vi were pretty light sleepers, Jake thought, probably due to the rather hostile environment that surrounded them. But it was also the most beautiful place he had ever been lucky enough to see. He would not trade being here for anything, even if it was dangerous.

The glowing pink tendril-leaves of the Tree of Souls were wafting gently in the slight, warm breeze. A few warbonnet ferns were visible near the edge of the forest; Jake was still embarrassed by all the Na'vi names for plants and animals that he still did not know – this was one of them. They wanted him to be their olo'eyktan, but Jake still had trouble carrying on a conversation exclusively in Na'vi. Neytiri often had to help him find words that he was after when talking with People that knew no English.

Jake turned his head back to study the features of his sleeping mate. She was so beautiful. He had often tried to figure out why, exactly, she was so attractive to him. He had never been attracted to a _human _female as strongly as he had been attracted to Neytiri. Her cheekbones were high, he had thought, framing her face nicely and noting that she had the lean face and bone structure of an ubermodel back on Earth. But, still, she put even the most beautiful of Earth women to shame quite easily, he thought. Jake wondered if other humans found Na'vi women attractive. He would have to ask Norm about this next time he saw his friend. Lying here next to her, studying her features, Jake decided that it was here giant, golden eyes. But not just her eyeballs, not just her golden irises. No, not _just_ the color of her eyes – it was the shape of her eyes as well. They were perfect, he thought, unable to quantify their shape immediately. It was the way that the shape of her eyes kind of pinched down toward her nose. Maybe it was the way her eyelids had a nearly perfect arc-like shape, or perhaps it was the overall shape of her eyes – their almond shape, he wondered idly. As he lay there watching her, Neytiri began to stir again. The unease that had been a permanent part of his consciousness since he woke up in his Na'vi body drifted back into his mind as he lay here watching her. How could he fulfill Eywa's prophecy? How could he choose anyone over Neytiri? He was selfish when it came to her; he would willingly let others die to save her. If Eywa thought that he would sacrifice _his_ Neytiri to save thousands, then she was going to be sadly disappointed.

Her fingers were twitching slightly, and one of the muscles in her right leg appeared to be spasming. The corners of her mouth were also moving slightly. She made a slight noise again, more like she was trying to make a word this time Jake thought. Her breathing had increased in speed, and it had also shallowed significantly. She was making a series of soft, muffled moaning sounds now, perforated every so often with a speech-like sound. Jake could not recognize any distinct words, but the word-sounds were growing more frequent. Her body rapidly began to grow more and more agitated – her mind as well, from what Jake could tell. Her eyes darted back and for the behind her eyelids. She was moving her arms and legs slightly now; her head was moving from side to side, and the words were growing more distinct and louder. Jake placed his right hand on his mate's shoulder, and gave her a slight shake.

"Neytiri," he whispered into her ear, trying to be considerate of the many other People sleeping nearby. He recognized the word she was repeating over and over now, even if she was doing it through closed lips. Neytiri was saying 'no' over and over now, nonstop. Jake raised himself off of his left elbow, and sat up close to her. He moved his hand onto her cheek, shaking her slightly while saying her name once again. No response. She body was shaking now, and was pronouncing the word through an open mouth. Jake placed both hands on her shoulders and shook her firmly. She did not open her eyes.

Jake began to hear People nearby stirring. He looked over his shoulder, and a few of those nearby were sitting up, looking concerned. Neytiri was yelling no now, over and over, and moving her limbs violently. Jake shook her again and again, repeatedly, but there was no response from her. He looked around their quarters, desperate now, looking for anything that he might be able to use. He spotted what he was looking for a few feet away. He lay Neytiri's head gently on the ground, and shifted on his heels to grab the waterskin. He was back at her side in a moment. He grabbed he shoulders again, and hoisted her writhing body back into his lap where he could make sure she would not injure herself. He opened the neck on the waterskin and poured cold water onto Neytiri's face, careful not to pour water into her mouth or nostrils. Suddenly, Neytiri opened her eyes and sprang up to a sitting posture and gasped for breath.

She sat there looking confused and sad, panting for a moment. Then her face slowly creased, the corners of her mouth turned downward, and she began to cry; the same pained, mournful cries that he had heard when Eytukan had died. Jake firmly grabbed her by the neck and pulled her into his arms. She didn't resist this time like she had when her father had been killed, collapsing into his lap. She cried loudly and violently for many minutes. Some of the People who slept nearby came to Jake and Neytiri's personal sleeping space, obviously concerned. They respectfully kept space between the couple and themselves. Mo'at appeared among the small crowd that had gathered, winding her way through and entering their small sleeping area. She looked at Jake without saying anything, instead tilting her head slightly to the side questioningly.

Jake looked at the Tsahik, shrugging very slightly. "She had a nightmare," Jake explained quietly. Seeing that Mo'at did not understand the human word, he tried to find the Na'vi words to explain. "She had a, um – [unil kewong]," Jake said uncertainly.

Mo'at looked at Jake in confusion. Simultaneously, the crying woman enclosed in his arms began to convulse slightly differently than she had been doing before. Jake looked down at Neytiri, and was surprised to see her laughing slightly through her tears.

Jake's confused look prompted Mo'at to speak. "Jakesuley," she began, "What is it you mean? Did you mean to say [unil'kawng]?" the Tsahik asked beginning to grin slightly.

Jake looked a little embarrassed. "Oh no…" he said aloud, remembering a particularly embarrassing incident during his training. He had said '[lor txìm]' to Neytiri one evening as he was reflecting on the beauty of the surrounding bioluminescent forest. He had been rewarded with laughter then as well. Neytiri had had to explain to him that what he _meant_ to say was 'lor txon', or beautiful night. She had been laughing so hard, he almost could not understand her translation of what he had actually said. From what he did manage to pick out, he had told her how beautiful a certain piece of her anatomy was. With the image of this reflection still in his head, Jake finally had to ask, "…what did I say this time?"

Mo'at looked at Jake with a rue smile, "At first, Jakesuley, I thought you had done something to upset my daughter. You said to me when first I came to you, 'bad alien.'" Neytiri's giggles started again as her mother spoke the translation aloud. "I thought you were telling me that you were a bad alien – that you had upset my daughter," Mo'at said, smiling broadly now, just managing to hold back her laughter.

"Well, at least I didn't say anything rude, or talk inappropriately about someone's anatomy," Jake said, now smiling himself. Jake looked out at the few People who were still gathered outside of their makeshift personal quarters. He spotted a few People that he recognized – Niri'te and Alyara, both young healers with whom he had grown acquainted as he had helped see to the wounded and dying in the days following the battle. Jake knew that one of the injured warriors staying with the Omaticaya was interested in Alyara. He had approached Jake in his official capacity as olo'eyktan a few days ago to ask if it would be acceptable for him to stay after his injuries had healed, so that he might court the young healer. Jake was pleased not only for their new relationship, but also for the probable new warrior it would bring into the clan.

Jake spoke softly to the small gathering, "[Thank you all for your concern, but Neytiri has suffered only a _bad dream._" Jake stressed the correct words slightly to the People who had heard his exchange with Mo'at. There were a few soft giggles as the seven or eight People there turned and quietly walked back to their sleeping areas. Mo'at, though, did not leave. She sat down silently next to Jake and her daughter, who was still curled up in Jakes arms. Neytiri had stopped crying, but she remained still, and silent. Mo'at touched her daughter's cheek lovingly.

"What have you dreamed of, my daughter?" the Tsahik asked Neytiri in English.

"Mother, I saw terrible, mighty creatures that I have never seen – that we do not know. They were so strange, so alien," Neytiri said softly. "Many of them had great mouths with many teeth. Some were brightly colored, but many were plain. All had big, intelligent eyes. I was walking among them, but they could not move. It was like they had been tied to the ground with unseen cord." She paused, fighting her emotions for control of her body. "I could hear their thoughts, mother." Neytiri began to look sad again. Her ears were low, pressed slightly against her head, and her lower lip trembled slightly. "I could feel their emotions, mother. I could feel their pain – it was _real_ pain. They were calling out to their young, to their mates." A tear fell down her cheek as she recalled the dream. "They were asking me to kill them, mother," she said, beginning to sob softly again. "They wanted me to find their children," she cried loudly, tears streaming down her face again, "and to kill them! They suffered horribly… but thought only… of the suffering of their young!" Neytiri could no longer speak through her sobs. She closed her eyes and closed herself off to both Jake and her mother. She curled into herself as tightly as she could, but Jake would not let her go. He held the small, wet ball that was his mate in his arms as she cried herself back to sleep.

When her daughter had regained the relative peace of unconsciousness, Mo'at gently placed her hand on Jake's shoulder. "Jakesuley," she whispered, "when first I came to you to-night, when first I realized that my daughter had a 'nite-maar', I thought it was to mark a joyous occasion."

Jake looked up at Mo'at with a very confused expression. The Tsahik held up her hand – a very Mo'at gesture that Jake had come to understand well. Shut up.

Mo'at continued, "Women who are with child often have unusual, or very strong dreams at first. My first thought when I came tonight was of this." Mo'at could see Jake's growing excitement, and had to stop him from speaking once again. "But this is not what happened this night," she continued. Jake looked deflated almost instantly. "This was not a dream my daughter had this night. I fear that what my daughter Saw this night is like that which you experienced after passing through Eywa's eye.

"Neytiri has been given a vision from Eywa," the Tsahik pronounced quietly. "You both must come to me in the morning. We _must_ try and understand the meaning of your combined Sight," she commanded. She looked lovingly down at her daughter, content that she was both safe and loved. She looked at Jake as she stood up, put her hand to her head, palm side in, and opened it as she moved it away from her head; Jake recognized the visual representation of 'I see you'. Mo'at turned and left the couple alone.

* * *

Neytiri awoke later than usual to find that Jake was not lying beside her. Propping herself up on an elbow, she glanced around the encampment to see if she could pick out his form. Not being able to see him anywhere, she sat up fully in a cross-legged position. She was still slightly troubled from the dream that she had had last night. And she had a headache. Neytiri could not recall the last time that she had awakened with a headache. Perhaps the pain in her head had something to do with the 'vision' she had, she thought to herself. It had been so real – so depressing. There had been so much suffering. And she could feel the combined suffering of them all, whatever they were. A shiver ran down her spine ending at the tip of her tail, as she thought again of the adult creatures only thought to her. They had all been thinking the same thing, and there had been hundreds of them – creatures that she had never seen before, in a place she had never been. They were not thinking of their own discomfort, their own pain or suffering. They could not breathe, and she knew through their thoughts that they were helpless to do anything about it. Each creature, no matter how large and mighty, or small and meek, each had asked the same thing of her. No, each had _begged_;_ please kill my child_. Neytiri felt her eyes growing hot again, and knew that she would be crying soon if she continued to think about this vision.

She looked around again, trying to figure out what part of the day it was. The sky was no longer orange, and the sun was climbing in the sky. She had slept much longer than was typical for her. She had been working very hard over the past days, she thought. Funeral rites and prayers for the badly injured and missing took much of her time, as did helping to lead the clan while Jake had been recovering. That Neytiri did not see him was a good sign, she thought. Perhaps it meant that he was meeting with the various groups that would need some of his time. Of the most important, Neytiri thought, would be the hunters. With the thousands of extra People who had been in the area for many days, food gathering and hunting had been full-time jobs for many members of the clan. Even though the vast majority of Na'vi had left, there were still perhaps more than [zamtsìvo] injured of other clans in the Well of Souls camp, perhaps more she thought. Around half this number of injured were of her own clan, the Omaticaya. Together with the remaining Omaticaya who had not been killed at the attack on their old [kelutral], there were many mouths to feed, and few warriors to hunt. The forest had, for a short time, supported a great number of People – far more than it would have had to in more normal, balanced, times. As a consequence of the war gathering, large game had been becoming much harder to find, as have fresh fruits, nuts, roots, and mushrooms. Both hunting and gathering groups, alike, had been venturing much further from the Well of Souls to find food. Luckily, there was a river not far from their camp that contained many large fish and [kilvan'ngawn], large, delicious worms that lived partially buried in the mud in slow moving stretches of the river. They were quite easy to harvest, even for many of the old, who had been pressed into service gathering anything edible to feed the many additional mouths. Luckily, the worms were very large; one would feed several Na'vi, and they were easily dried in the sun if not eaten, though they almost always were. They had the additional benefit of not being able to run or to dig very fast, and were harvested simply by plucking them from the mud.

The thought of food made Neytiri suddenly realize that she was very hungry, and she moved out of the small lean-to structure that she shared with Jake. It held all of the worldly goods that they had. Not much, she thought, considering just about everything she had had been in hometree when it had been destroyed. Some had gone back to see if anything could be salvaged. Unfortunately, the part of the tree that contained most of the People's personal belongings had been burned badly, and not much had been recovered.

She stood fully, and stretched out her arms and legs in the mid morning sun. The smell of the cook fires in the distance indicated that something would still be available to eat. As she turned in their direction, she noticed Norm'an a short distance away. The human had been invited to the transfer ceremony where Jake had been made fully Na'vi. He had also been asked if he would like to spend some time among The People. Since his dreamwalker body had been damaged in the battle, Neytiri had not been sure if Nor'man would accept the invitation or not. She had been glad when he had. Both for Jake's sake, and for Norm's – he had been a faithful friend and ally to the Omaticaya, and she was glad that he could spend time among them. Now, though, she was interested to know if Norm might have any insight into Jake's vision that he had not shared with her. She wound her way through a few People, greeting those she knew as she passed by. Finally, she made her way to where Norm was.

"Oel ngati kmeie, Norm'anspellman."

"Neytiri!" Norm exclaimed turning from a conversation he had been having with one of the cooks. "[Oeru teya si ne tse'a nga]!"

"No, Nor'man, the satisfaction is mine," she replied in English, not wanting the gist of this conversation getting back to Jake; most Na'vi could speak or understand very little of the language. "I trust the People are treating you well?" she asked.

"I have been treated with nothing but kindness and respect," Norm said graciously. "I've just been trying to figure out which of the cooked meats is tapirus. I don't know about those giant worms, or yerik, but I _do _know that it's safe for me to eat tapirus."

"It is the one with a slightly lighter color. Here, I will show," Neytiri said, walking toward a large leaf piled high with various meats that had been cooked that morning. "See this dark one here," she said pointing to a rather large slab of seared meat. "This is yerik, it is dark. These are [kilvan'ngawn] – worms, Jake calls. This is fish," she said pointing to a flaky, grey-brown meat with colorful skin still attached. "Here, this one – see how color is, [neympin]," she said after a pause, unable to find the word in English.

"Pale," Norm offered. "Yes, I see that. Are there any other meats consumed by the Na'vi that are a similar color?" Norm asked.

"No," Neytiri said, adding "It is distinctive in its color, and its smell. It has a very strong smell. If you do not wish to mistake other meats for tapirus, just remember how it smells."

"Thanks, Neytiri," he said smiling. "Have you eaten yet?"

"No, I woke up very late this morning."

"Would you like to join me for breakfast?" Norm asked.

"Yes, Norm'an. There is something, also, I would like to ask you about," she said as they turned toward the piles of various foods arranged on large leaves. Neytiri picked up two smaller leaves from a stack and handed one to Norm.

"Sure," Norm said as he accepted the leaf from Neytiri. "What can I do for you, princess."

"Please Norm, call me only Neytiri," she said turning quickly to look down at Norm with her eyes slightly widened. She appeared to be slightly taken aback by Norm's implied formality.

"Whoa, sorry – that was a joke," Norm said holding up his hands and looking embarrassed. She looked down at him quizzically, with her head held slightly at an angle, as if asking for an explanation. "Sometimes, people – humans, rather – like to make light of a situation, or um, diffuse tension, by making jokes." He could see from her expression that she still did not completely understand. "You and I know each other fairly well," he began again, picking up a piece of tapirus from the pile, "so, calling you by a more formal title, like princess, boss, chief, whatever, is completely unnecessary. I guess because it's not needed, it takes the edge off of the start of a conversation. By the look you gave me when you asked if we could talk, I assumed the topic would be difficult or uncomfortable, so I was trying to inject a bit of levity – um, fun rather, into the conversation."

Neytiri appeared to understand what Norm was explaining to her now. She had stopped looking at Norm half way through his explanation to pick up a piece of ngawn, a piece of fruit and some lionberry seeds. She noticed Norm's inspecting a number of items, but saw his hesitation at picking anything else. "Doc'tor Augustine ate these a few times when she was here in her human body," she offered, pointing at a small pile of bright sky-blue berries. "They are called [kali'ean mauti]," she said.

"Hmm – sweet blue fruit?" Norm asked, picking up a few and placing them on his leaf. They must be pretty small to a Na'vi, he thought to himself as he examined them, but each of the fruits was the length of his thumb. The top and bottom – or what Norm assumed were the top and bottom – were rounded, but the middle was swollen, giving them a rounded, almost diamond shape. He could not see where a stem had attached the fruit to a plant. They were firm to the touch, and had a very pleasing scent – somewhat reminiscent of blackberry, he thought. Or what the artificial scent of blackberry was like, rather; Norm had never actually eaten a _real_ blackberry – like most real produce back on Earth, they were a luxury only the very rich could afford.

"Yes," she answered. "They grow close to where we catch fish." She glanced around, looking for a private place to talk. Sensing that Norm had taken all he was going to, she asked, "Shall we sit and eat?" motioning toward a small rock bench away from most of the other people that were eating.

"Yeah, that would be great," Norm replied, following her to the small ledge. Norm sat down on the rock, while Neytiri sat down cross-legged on the ground. Norm placed his leaf-plate on the rock beside him and pulled out a small hand-held computer and began to look for any information that he could find on the bright blue fruit. Satisfied, finally, that the beautiful fruit would not kill him, Norm set about the absurd task of trying to eat while wearing an exopack. He tore the tapirus into small bite-sized portions. These were easy enough to eat – he pulled the mask up, pushed a piece of the meat into his mouth, and replaced the mask. Norm had had tapirus before – it had been served in the cafeteria at Hell's Gate before, and had been the brunt of more than a few very bad jokes. He liked the flavor though – a bit greasy and mild, with a hint of saltiness. His senses were nearly overwhelmed when he pushed one of the blue fruits into his mouth. It exploded in his mouth in a symphony of flavor. Once through the thick skin, the fruit practically exploded in the most concentrated, fruity flavor that Norm had ever experienced. It tasted like nothing he could compare it with. It was bright, he thought, unable to put a word to the vivid taste. Blue was the only thing that came to mind. It tasted overwhelmingly blue. Sweet, bright, blue.

Neytiri had been watching Norm. As his expression had gone from curious to surprised to pleased, her smile had widened. These fruit were relatively abundant here, and most Na'vi found the flavor too strong, except for children. "I am glad that you like the fruit," Neytiri said through her grin.

"I can't understand why I haven't had these before," Norm stammered between fruits, which he enthusiastically pushed into his mouth in groups of two or more.

Neytiri waited patiently as Norm finished his breakfast. She thought that he looked a little sad when he had finished the last of his fruits. "There are always these fruits at meals, Norm'an. Most Na'vi do not prefer them," she said.

Nor looked at her with a questioning look on his face, "I can't understand why not," he said.

"For us, they have an undesired effect if too many are eaten," she said. "Doc'tor Augustine did not have this same problem, so I do not think that you will either.

Norm looked at Neytiri through his facemask. "I'm almost afraid to ask," Norm said cautiously. "But what is the effect?" he finally managed to ask.

"It gives a stomaak ache," she said. Norm looked a little relieved at only so mild a symptom. But Neytiri went on, "followed by many times going to bathroom as you say." She sat back slightly, beaming at Norms expression. His mouth was slightly opened, and he had a terrified look on his face. Neytiri burst into laughter.

"What is so funny about a fruit inducing dysentery?" Norm asked.

"I do not know that word, Norm'an," she said through her laughs, "but I do know that this was a good joke on you." Neytiri continued laughing for several minutes before finally saying, "You should have seen your face," and ending with a small giggle.

"Very funny, princess," was Norm's reply. The two sat smiling at one another for a moment before Neytiri drove the conversation onward.

"Norm," she said with her smile slowly fading, "I know that you are a good friend to Jake. I sense that he is troubled terribly about something that happened when he passed through Eywa's eye."

Norm shifted uncomfortably on the rock bench that he was sitting on. His smile was now gone as well. Neytiri continued. "Me and mother both think that Eywa has talked directly with Jake through doc'tor Augustine. Since Jake has become, truly, one of The People, he has been acting strangely to me. He will not bond with me, and I can sense that he is not telling me something that is very important for both me and for the People." Neytiri paused briefly. She had been looking at the ground as she led up to this point in the conversation. She remained with her head angled slightly downward, but now she looked up at norm with her eyes, her emotion plainly visible. She asked, "Norm'an, do you know what Jake was told by Eywa?"

"Well," norm started, "he told me that he heard Grace inside his head." Norm paused for a moment, looked at his feet, and then continued uncomfortably. "He told me that she, or Eywa speaking through her, told him that the great sorrow was not over." Norm paused again as he noticed the late morning sky begin to grow slightly darker. He looked up toward Polyphemus, continuing, "She also told him that he would have to make the most difficult decision that anyone has ever had to make on Pandora. Ever."

Norm stopped talking entirely, continuing to look at the huge blue planet overhead. The Great Storm was in its usual spot, never leaving view of those on Pandora – or rather the planet-side view. The sky above them continued to grow darker, and their shadows grew dimmer and slightly blurred. Norm scanned the sky for Alpha Centauri B, and not seeing it, noted to himself that this would be a particularly dark eclipse. Polyphemus' edge was now slightly overlapping the disc of Alpha Centauri A.

Neytiri too was looking skyward now, but she pressed Norm still, "Has he not also said anything of the details to you? I sense great trouble in Jake, Norm'an. I think he is trying to hide something from me. I think," she paused for a moment, looking from the sky to Norm, and placing a hand on his shoulder to get his full attention, "I think Eywa has told him something of my future, or _our_ future together. I am worried, Norm," she said finally.

Norm looked at Neytiri through the growing mid-morning gloom around them. He placed his hand gently over hers. "Neytiri, I know this all has to be difficult for you. You've been through a lot, and I have nothing but respect and empathy for you. Jake is confused right now. He doesn't know what to make of what he's been told. I _do know _that he loves you completely," Norm emphasized, "and that he will share what he knows with you as soon as he…" Norm paused to try and phrase this part of his statement as sensitively as he could. "…understands what was meant by it," he finished.

"But Jake is still young in his understanding of Eywa's ways, Nor'man," Neytiri said, obviously upset. "He could mis-en-ter pret what he is to do. He must share with Tsahik what is to be done for such an important decision!" she nearly yelled, removing her hand from the small human sitting opposite her.

"Neytiri, you must trust Eywa's wisdom," Norm began. "I can see how upset you are, and I can understand why. But Jake is not keeping this from you to protect you, or to hide anything from you," Norm lied. "He just needs to – figure it out first, before sharing it with you. He _is _going to consult with Mo'at about what Eywa has told him, I believe. But I don't know when he plans to do this."

"Hhrumph," Neytiri said wearily, crossing her arms in front of her and looking at her feet. The sky had grown increasingly dark. Around them, the bioluminescent markings of several plant species were becoming visible in the midday twilight.

Norm looked over at Neytiri to see an unhappy scowl on her face. "I know if doesn't make any sense, but I'm sure Jake will tell you what's bothering him soon," Norm said. Jake had sworn him to secrecy when he had spoken with him. Under no circumstance was Norm to say _anything_ to Neytiri about what Jake had told his friend. Norm didn't like lying to Neytiri, but given the circumstance, there was nothing else he really could do. That upset him badly.

She looked up as the last bit of the nuclear furnace of Alpha Centauri A disappeared behind Polyphemus. The entire day side of the moon was now in deep, night-like darkness. The corona of Alpha Centauri A was visible against the rim of Polyphemus; the golden-white halo of superheated gas danced rhythmically for a few moments as they both watched it slowly disappear in silence. Just as the corona was about to disappear, Neytiri said, "We call this [atanvi'sarew]. Light rays that dance."

Norm looked around them. The Na'vi that he could see nearby did not appear phased by the sudden appearance of a midday midnight. They went about their normal daily lives. Norm did notice, however, that more People had appeared near the cooking fires than had been here a few moments before. All around them, the bioluminescent flora of the planet had come to life with light produced by chemical reactions within the cells of the plants. He had seen the bioluminescence many times before – he had explored the small floating mountain that had been his home for three months a few times after dark when he, Jake, and Dr. Augustine had been holed up at site 26. But at night there had always been at least one moon in the sky, and there was always the huge glowing visage of Polyphemus. Grace had also been quite adamant about not being outside during the eclipses because of the elevated radiation levels. Radiation, he thought to himself – the auroras would be starting soon.

Norm thought back to his university astrophysics course, recalling how Pandora was just barely outside of Polyphemus' Van Allen Belt, an extremely lucky fact for the plants and animals of Pandora. However, the charged particles constantly being emitted from Alpha Centauri A distort the normal torus shape of the radiation belts into a flame-like shape on the side of the planet facing away from the sun. This means that each time Pandora rotates through the dark side of the planet, it receives many times more radiation than it does while on the sun-facing side of the planet. This radiation, in the form of charged particles bombards the upper atmosphere of Pandora, resulting in a spectacular multi-colored aurora. The plants and animals of Pandora have a kind of build in protection, and their gene structures also have much more redundant coding regions, along with a transcription process that 'compares' coding regions to expressed areas within the cells to assure proper sequences get expressed.

"Have you ever seen the 'fires'?" Neytiri interrupted Norm's thoughts.

"I've never seen the aurora – the [sreton'ong tautxep] before," Norm said looking upward anxiously. "In person," he added when he noticed her looking at him curiously.

"They are beautiful," she said, also looking upward. "There is very old song, ['okrol], that tells of their creation. It is not song, like that which tells of an event, but more like le'jend." Norm nodded indicating that he understood the distinction she was trying to explain, and she continued. "After Eywa created all of the lands, the rivers, lakes and oceans; after the Great Mother had created the trees, plants, animals and finally, The People, we had no way of knowing her, and We were very unhappy and vi-o-lent. She had not yet given the Na'vi [tswin], cue," she said. "While She thought of a way to let us know her – to let us See her, she made a great fire far away where she lived to let the People know that she was still among us."

Norm nodded. There were violet tendrils of light just starting to be visible off in the distant black sky. They moved in shimmering waves, gradually growing in both brilliance and intensity; the waves often changed shape and orientation from nearly vertical to horizontal. Some were sine wave-like, while others were nearly linear. "I know of that song," Norm said, and then hearing a slight surprised noise from Neytiri, offered an explanation. "I studied your culture for many years before coming to Pandora," he explained. "It's my job, I study people, or groups of people. There are many native American Indian myths – stories of indigenous, native peoples from Earth, that are very similar to that song," Norm said, still looking at the sky.

After another long silent pause, Neytiri said, "Norm'an, I too have been given a vision." Norm looked from Polyphemus and the spreading aurora back down at Neytiri again. "I also do not understand its meaning. But I think it is related to what Jake has been told."

"What have you seen?" Norm asked involuntarily. "I mean, if you'd like to tell me," he added quickly. Norm understood how personal visions were, and how important they were in Na'vi culture. They were usually shared only with Tsahik and very close relatives, and sometimes not shared at all. Norm had been privy to Jake's 'vision', and had assumed, in the moment, that Neytiri would also want to share hers with him.

"I am not sure," she said. "In my dream, I saw many strange and mighty animals that I never have seen before. They are so different. In my vision, they cannot move." She began to feel physically dizzy at recalling the overpowering emotion she had felt, and looked like she might fall over.

"Whoa!" Norm said as he jumped to his feet and moved to her side. He propped his hip against her left shoulder and put his right arm around her neck to help stabilize her. "Are you ok?"

After a moment, she continued. "My dream was so sad, Norm," she said frowning deeply. "The animals were asking me to kill their young. They suffered terribly, but did not think of themselves." She looked down into her lap at her hands.

"Hey, it's ok," he tried to comfort her. "You know, it might be just a dream, Neytiri."

She looked up abruptly. "No!" she hissed. She was not crying, but her eyes were dewy. "It was too real to be only dream," she said wiping her eyes.

"Hey guys," a familiar voice said from behind them. Norm was slightly startled at Jake's voice, and Neytiri was once again staring down into her lap. "Enjoying the fireworks?" Jake stepped around his friend and his mate, looked at each of their faces, and realized that the mood between them was not at all what he had been expecting. He looked down at Norm who looked like he was impossibly trying to prop up a mountain. His human friend had a somber look on his face, but Jake could not help a small smile from forming at the corner of his mouth at the improbability of Norm keeping Neytiri from falling over.

"Hey," Jake said, crouching down to look into Neytiri's face, "have you been telling people about your dream?" She nodded weakly, continuing to look down. Jake looked at Norm, who was roughly at eye level, "Thanks, Norm, I got this," he said.

"Alright," Norm said. "I'll come find you later to see how she is." Norm crouched down slightly in front of Neytiri, put his hand on her neck, and said softly, "We'll get through this, Neytiri – all of us."

"Thanks," Jake said as Norm stood back up, "for being such a good friend to us both." Norm smiled weakly, then picked up his and Neytiri's used breakfast leaves, and walked toward the fires.

Jake turned to look back at Neytiri after Norm had left. "Hey, you ready to go talk to your mother about our visions?" She looked up with wide golden eyes, slightly surprised.

"Yes." She said.

* * *

**1.5 What a day.**

_Outside, Well of Souls, mid-day._

"Mother, oel ngati kmeie," Neytiri said softly as she rounded the back side of the Tree of Souls and entered the small grotto that Mo'at had claimed as her quarters as well as her official 'office'. The space was small but not cramped, and it had the benefit of being deeply shaded and cool, even in the midday heat. The floor was flat and level and the volcanic rock walls were irregularly stepped back as they went upward, giving the space plenty of natural, built-in seating and storage space. The small grotto was roughly horseshoe shaped, and portions of the walls were carpeted with a kind of soft, thick, brilliant green moss. Scattered around the space on the rock shelves and benches were freshly picked plants and herbs, as well as the various articles and artifacts that the Tsahik used in her official capacity for the clan.

"Ma ite," Mo'at began with a smile spreading across her face, "oe ma lrr ne tse'a nga." The Omaticaya Tsahik turned slightly to her left to greet Jake. "It is good, also, to see you, Jakesuley, 'itanmunxta and olo'eyktan." She bowed slightly to Jake.

"Oel ngati kmeie, sa'nok muntxate si Tsahik," Jake replied in perfect Na'vi, emulating the Tsahik's bow back to her. Mo'at's smile broadened at the greeting.

"So you have come to see me about your visions," Mo'at said, retaining her smile but looking only at Jake. "It is about time."

I'm sorry, Tsahik," Jake began, "but I have been very busy since regaining my strength following the, uh – ceremony." Jake looked at Neytiri, then back to Mo'at with a slightly embarrassed look. He knew the vision he had had, or the conversation, rather, was essentially important for all Na'vi, not just the Omaticaya. Yet how could he explain the entirety of the message to the two women – to _these two _women, he thought to himself, without causing impossible pain and sadness? They had both experienced such loss and misery. What would he tell them? 'Hey Mo'at, sorry, but Eywa wants to sacrifice your daughter to save the People.' 'Hey Neytiri, Eywa wants you to join her and not enjoy any of the rewards of your hard fought battle.' No. Jake decided with this thought not to tell either woman the exact details that Eywa had given him. If Eywa had wanted Neytiri to know anything else, she would have done so in _her _vision, Jake rationalized. And Eywa had not actually _named _Neytiri when she had spoken through Grace to him. He was not going to let anyone or anything take her from him.

"I was meeting with some of the hunters who are healthy enough to travel," Jake said finally, remembered that he was supposed to be talking. "We have fewer hunters than ever since the war, and we need to look for a new home…" he said, a pang of guilt running through him. Jake looked down at his feet but continued, "…and game is harder and harder to find."

Neytiri placed her hand on Jake's shoulder. "Jake, it was not your fault that so many died." He looked up as she spoke, and their eyes met. Jake looked saddened by the reminder of the war's cost. And he looked older. Neytiri continued, "If these People had not fought, if they had not offered their lives for all of us, we might be all dead. The tawtute would have killed us off so they could strip our world of its re-score-ses."

"My daughter speaks the truth, Jakesuley," Mo'at added firmly. "You have changed much since you came to us. You are a great leader, Toruk makto. The people know this," Mo'at said with a cryptic expression on her face. "Those who died gave this of themselves willingly – proudly. They defended their home, their families – from those who would take it from them. This was necessary. Do not feel bad for them, they are with Eywa. They will be remembered in song forever, as will you Toruk Macto," she said with a wry smile.

"I just don't know if I can do this," Jake said heavily. "I've always been the one taking commands, not giving them. I don't know enough about the job to be able to do it right."

"Jake," Neytiri said softly, "I know you can lead us. You already have. You gathered the People together when we were lost and scared. No one of us knew what to do. You gave us reason to hope and a plan that not one of the People could have imagined. You led us into battle, and with help of Eywa," she said looking deeply into her mate's eyes. "Help that only you had the fore-site to ask of the All-Mother. Because of you, we defeated the tawtute. All this you have done. These things you have done for the People," she said placing her right hand over Jake's heart. "Your actions – kem – that _you _have done show that you are _already_ our leader. Tsu'tey saw this in you too. _You_ were olo'eyktan from the moment you soared into Well of Souls on Toruk." Neytiri touched Jake's cheek as she noticed his emotions deflate slightly at the mention of the short-lived olo'eyktan. "This, Tsu'tey knew also," she added very softly.

"Ok," Jake said resignedly, but looking up a bit more. He looked at the two strongest women he had ever known, "I'll give it my best."

"Good," Mo'at said forcefully. "Let us not speak of this anymore then." She looked at her daughter, then at Jake, before motioning to the stone benches that formed the lower walls of the grotto. "Come, sit. We have much to discuss."

* * *

"Whoa," Alene said quietly to herself as she sat upright in her chair. She had been reclining idly in the chair a moment before thinking about how she'd rather be outside clearing up debris, or doing just about anything other than this. There hadn't been much to do in the operations center following the departure of the ISV Venture Star, and they rotated daily as to who got to sit and be bored. There had been a rather long, droll meeting among the remaining humans at Hell's Gate to familiarize everyone with operation of terminals, communications gear, and life support systems in the OPS center after the RDA personnel had departed. After that, not much excitement, Alene thought to herself. She slowly moved her wheeled desk chair closer to the terminal that was emitting a soft, but annoying alarm accompanied by a bright orange blinking light. She was glad, she thought, that the soft alarm had been slightly annoying. Otherwise she might not have paid it any immediate attention.

Looking at the display that had beckoned her closer, she saw the rather cryptic message displayed on the bottom portion of the screen contained in a communications dialogue box: 'DCOMSAT4 UNRESP. CODE C149.2. IMMEDIATE ATTENTION REQUIRED.' Well, she thought to herself, looking around the Ops center, at least the last part of the message makes some sense.

Alene Plasse was a fit 30-something avatar driver who originally hailed from Waubakee, Wisconsin. She never let anyone know that she was actually 41. Her mid-back length slightly curly brunette hair showed absolutely no gray – possibly because of all the gowth hormones she consumed while back on Earth. She had been interested in the abundant 425 million year old fossils that were found throughout the area that she grew up in. Wisconsin was still one of the areas where actual trees and real live grass, and yes, even the occasional wild white-tailed deer could still be found outside of the strict confines of the 'natural reserves' established in the latter part of the twenty-first century. Roadcuts in western and central Wisconsin had fuelled young Alene's interest in evolution, leading her to eventually enroll in biology as an undergrad at UW Madison. She had ended up graduating with two degrees, biochemistry and biology. She enrolled the following year in the geology Ph.D. program, where she specialized in the early evolution of life on Earth, including some of the earliest known Archaea preserved in deep ocean chert nodules. Her dissertation had pushed the record of _known _complex life on Earth back by 200 million years, from 2.97 billion years to 3.15 billion and change. Her material had been so well-preserved that through SEM photos alone, she had laid to rest the ancient debate as to whether Archaea were actually bacteria or not. She had also managed to recover chemical fossils that differed from those of bacteria significantly enough that even the staunchest supporters of the Archaeabacteria+Eubacteria hypothesis had to admit defeat.

Her work in cryptic fossils had lead her to pursue research in the burgeoning field of xenobiology – the study of extraterrestrial life. Since the discovery of Pandora many, many years earlier, the field had taken off. She had been approached by the RDA's research division and asked if she'd like to take a trip. She had had to think about it for exactly half a second.

Right now, her thoughts came back to the blinking orange box on the terminal screen. It looked pretty important. She touched a button on the console, and spoke into a microphone next to the curved transparent monitor. "Hey max, could you come up to OPS, ASAP please. This is, um, not a drill." After a short delay, her message was broadcast over the base intercom.

A few seconds later, Max's voice came through the earpiece of the headset she hastily put on. "Yeah, what's up?" Max asked.

"Max, I think we got a problem. The COM terminal is flashing and an alarm is going off – would you come up here, I have no idea what to do," Alene rattled off in rapid-fire succession. "I'm a doctor, Jim, not a rocket scientist" she added for a bit of levity, sensing how desperate she had sounded a moment before.

"Ok, there should be a dialog box open on the bottom part of the screen," Max said into her ear. "Tell me what it says."

"Well, the whole box is flashing orange, and there is an audible alarm coming out of the terminal's speaker." She wheeled in close to the COM terminal to read the warning message to Max. "It says, 'D-C-O-M-S-A-T-four U-N-R-E-S-P. Code C-one four nine point two. Immediate attention required."

There was a long pause in her headset. She could hear Max tapping on his portable pad. "That bastard," he said finally, sounding vexed. "I'll be right up."

"Is it bad?" Alene asked through the portable headset.

"It's not good."

* * *

Jake and Neytiri had just left Mo'at's grotto when Norm came running up to them with a headset on. The pair looked at him with slightly amused expressions as he bent over, obviously winded from running. "Jake, Neytiri," he panted when he had caught his breath a bit, "we got a slight problem," Norm breathed. "The long range COM satellite isn't responding. It also isn't there anymore." Jakes expression turned from light-hearted amusement to concern as he spoke. "Max looked up the error code that was spit out by the COM terminal.

Norm straightened up, finally looking up into Jake's and Neytiri's eyes. "The satellite has a built in buffer, where it keeps track of what's going on in its immediate 'neighborhood'. The buffer is designed as a kind of warning system, so that if anything physically happens to the satellite – if it's hit by a meteorite, a piece of space junk, whatever – it sends a burst transmission the millisecond that the impact sensors detect any attitudinal, rotational, or acceleration change."

"Whoa Norm, slow down," Jake said. "And speak English. No, _de-jargoned_ English," he emphasized.

"When the deep COM satellite detects a bump, nudge, or collision, it sends a transmission telling the OPS control mainframe what happened," Norm said.

"And…" Jake asked.

"Well, it just told us that it was moved."

"What do you mean, moved?" Jake asked with a blank look on his face.

"Moved, as in no longer where it's supposed to be." Jake's expression was still blank. Norm's impatience with Jake's lack of understanding of the situation was beginning to express itself in his human body language. "Listen Jake, the buffer also contained the reason _why_ it was moved." Norm paused slightly for effect. "It was moved by this." Norm held up a small portable pad with an image on the screen.

Jake took the pad from his friend and held it up between himself and Neytiri. The photo on the tiny screen was unmistakable. Jake was looking at the last picture the satellite would ever transmit to Hell's Gate – a close-up shot of the robotic arm of a Valkyrie shuttle. "That bastard," he said grinding his teeth together, the muscles on his lower jaw rippling and flexing.

"What is it Jake," Neytiri asked motioning to the tiny screen, a look of concern on her face.

"It's an arm – a, uh…" Jake looked for words that would not confuse his mate, while also not making her feel inferior, a difficult task at times. "it's a long machine arm that comes out of the shuttle – the spaceship that the RDA people left on. The people in the shuttle can use it to grab onto things floating around in space, in the sky between planets."

Neytiri's expression turned from concern to hostility. Her eyes narrowed and her lips thinned. "That means tawtute have not left!" she nearly yelled. "They can not be trusted, ever! Arrhhh," she hissed with great frustration, raising her arms up in front of her face and pushing back from Jake. "I will go tell mother," she said loudly, stalking away back in the direction they had just come.

"Norm, please remember it's not personal," Jake said quietly after Neytiri was out of earshot. "Is Max on the headset now?"

"Yeah – here you go," he said, removing the headset and handing it to Jake.

"Hey Max, you there?" Jake asked into the transmitter. The headset was much too small to be worn in the normal manner – Jake had to alternate between speaking into the transmitter and moving the receiver up to his ear.

"Yeah, I'm here Jake. Sorry this call wasn't under better circumstances. Hey, congrats on the new body, huh?" Max said into Jake's ear.

"Hey, thanks." Jake said, then getting straight to the point, "Now what's up with the RDA hanging around above our heads?"

"Well, about an hour ago one of the avatar drivers, Alene Plasse, was on duty in OPS when a blinking orange warning light stated going off. She called me up, and I looked up the code that was displayed. Turns out that the code indicates a telemetry failure based on a faulty orbital parameter. In other words", Max said after a brief pause, "somebody plucked our optical deep communications satellite out of its orbit. You can guess who that somebody is."

"So there's no way of regaining control of the satellite?" Jake asked.

"Unfortunately, no. Once the ground communications antenna is no longer pointing within about fifteen or so degrees of our position, the satellite is effectively dead to us. My guess is that Parker has no plans of returning _immediately_ to Earth. He's probably parked in orbit around one of the other moons of Polyphemus, or around the planet itself. He'd need that satellite more than any of the others to communicate with incoming ISV's, and with Earth."

"Crap. That's not what I wanted to hear, Max," Jake said. "Gimee a minute to think Max."

"Sure, I'll be here."

Jake walked slowly over the ledge of the short, raise area that the Tree of Souls sat atop, turned, and sat down on a narrow natural rock bench. His eyes were focused somewhere in the air above the Well, momentarily deep in thought. Norm followed Jake after a minute or two. He leaned up against the rock, and waited. Neither of them said anything for a while.

"How many other satellites do we have in orbit?" Jake asked aloud.

"Four," Max said into his ear.

"Four, I think," Norm said, not knowing if Jake was talking to himself or to Max.

"Ok, one at a time," Jake said. "Max, what do each of the satellites do?"

"One is a geo survey satellite, takes photos, geodetic data, mineral resource scans, things for the mining ops, mostly. Very limited communications capability. The second is for planetside communications. It bounces most communications from the surface to orbit, then back down – we're using it to talk right now. Let's see, third is a scanning and mapping satellite, about fifty years old. Was one of the initial instrument packages sent to the Alpha Centauri system. It's still functional, but doesn't really do all that much. It was programmed to do a quick scan of any planets that it ran into, then enter orbit around any Earth-like world it found, so here it is. And lastly, there is an orbital imaging array. It has a high powered telescope, and sub-centimeter resolution imaging capabilities in optical, IR, UV, grav and radar bands," Max said. "Oh, and there are a few others scattered around the system. One monitors the outer parts of the ACA system, one detects traffic, tracks meteorites, that kind of stuff. But these aren't in our orbit."

Jake though for a second. "Alright, so if you had to guess, what do you think they're going to go after next?"

"If I was Parker – shudder to think of that," Max said into Jake's ear, "I'd go for the planetside COM satellite. We don't really use it all that much, but it would certainly make communicating with you out in the field more difficult."

"Is there any way we can move it? Put it into a different orbit, or temporarily hide it?"

"What are you thinking, Jake?" Max asked.

"Well, it might be better to hide it somewhere for now than allow them to get their hands on it. I mean, it would be an essential piece of equipment if they were planning on coming back down eventually, right?"

"For sure," Max said.

"Well, if we don't use it much, it might be better to hide it, or destroy it," Jake said.

"One problem with that is that it has a limited fuel capacity. Let me see what I can come up – Whoa!" The transmission abruptly went dead.

"Max? What's going on?" Jake asked just as Neytiri and Mo'at appeared around the corner of the Tree from them. Neither of the two women looked happy, Jake thought. "Max," Jake repeated into the headset.

"What's wrong, Jake?" Norm asked.

"I think Parker may have just picked up satellite numero dos," Jake said with a defeated expression on his face.

Norm made the traditional non-verbal greeting to both Neytiri and Mo'at as they arrived, and bowed slightly to Mo'at in deference for her position. Neytiri saw only Jake's expression, though. After a moment she asked, "What is it Jake, what has happened now?"

"It looks like they've taken out the communications satellite for the planet. Now we can't communicate with Hell's Gate with these." Jake said, holding up the headset he had been using to communicate with Max just moments before.

"This is bad, Jakesuley?" Mo'at asked.

"It can't be good," Jake said plainly. "It means that we can't talk to the remaining humans at Hell's Gate without actually having to travel there. If there is an emergency, it will be impossible to get word to them, or for them to get word to us quickly."

Norm was fidgeting more than usual. He looked up at Jake nervously, "How are they going to know to come pick me up," Norm asked suddenly. "I've got a spare exopack, but I think I've only got O2 for about another couple of days." Norm looked slightly shaken with the news of the communications satellite failure. He was looking off into space, rubbing the back of his neck absently with his right hand.

"Don't sweat it Norm," Jake said. "If I have to, I'll give you a lift back on my ikran." This seemed to settle his friend down a bit.

"Neyiri, do you know –" Jake began, but was interrupted by a low, unusual sound that he did not immediately recognize. He stopped speaking, and looked at Neytiri questioningly. Both she and Mo'at had a look of restrained terror on their faces. Their eyes darted around quickly, Jake saw. They looked upward at the rim of the Well of Souls, and toward the overhead arches that seemed to defy gravity. Jake heard the sound grew slightly, yet rapidly in volume, and a violent shudder entered the Well of Souls from Jakes left, passed through the ground below his feet, and moved off with impossible speed to his right. Having lived in California for part of his life, Jake knew immediately what was happening. Instinctively, he looked upward. They were far enough away from the arches that if they were to fall, they were in no immediate danger. Jake scanned the caldera rim for overhanging trees that could fall inward, but none seemed to pose an immediate threat. Ikran were hastily taking to the air as fast as their wings would let them. The group's position near the base of the Tree of Souls appeared to be as good a place as any for the time being.

The rock beneath their feet was now beginning to move. It felt as if the stone itself had become liquefied, and that they were somehow standing on solidified moving waves just offshore. Not breaking waves, but rolling ones. Out just deep enough where the water couldn't 'feel the bottom' as one of his buddies who used to surf had told him long ago. The phase had been so improbable that it had always stuck with him. The shaking was disorienting, and it was hard to keep balanced and upright. Norm had fallen over, and Neytiri and Mo'at were uttering cries and yells as they tried to keep their balance. All around them, Jake could see many People trying to do the same. Others were lying on the ground, covering their faces and heads with whatever they could. Jake kept watching the arches far overhead for any sign of collapse, knowing that there was nothing he could do if they did. Slowly, the shaking began to subside, and as quickly as it had started, the quake was over.

Jake looked around, scanning the Well of Souls for damage or wounded. Relieved that he saw none of either, he reached a hand down to his friend, who was still lying on the ground. "Need a hand, buddy?" he asked.

Norm grabbed his hand, and Jake effortlessly hoisted the man upright. "Thanks," Norm said.

Jake looked at his mate who was standing there with a look of disbelief on her face, then to Mo'at who had a similar look. Both women were silent.

"What a day," Jake said at last.

* * *

**1.6 Ruins.**

_Outside, Well of Souls, afternoon._

Jake had spent the better part of the last hour or so walking around the Well of Souls encampment talking with People and trying to get a handle on the damage caused by the quake. A few of the tribe elders had been hurt when they had fallen over, but their wounds were minor. The same would not have been the case if they had been human, he thought. A fall like some that Jake had seen earlier today would have resulted in broken bones or maybe worse for elderly people back on Earth. A combination of the lower gravity and the tougher bones of the Na'vi meant that tragedies from merely falling, even among the extremely aged, were almost completely unknown here. Other than a few minor cuts and scratches, one boy had what might be a broken foot that had been caused by a small rockfall, but even that did not look debilitating.

Damage had been minor as well. Most of their stuff had already been destroyed, he thought to himself. The only reason that the damage hadn't been worse was that there really wasn't anything _to _damage. Some of the foods near the cooking fires had fallen onto the ground, but the People were not troubled by eating a bit of dirt on their food like humans would have been. The People were not troubled by much, Jake reflected as he slowly turned, surveying the camp. Everywhere he looked, the People were busy going about their normal routine as if nothing at all had happened. These were remarkably resilient people. They were his kind of people, Jake thought. They were _his _people. His responsibility.

The weight of Eywa's message came flooding back into his consciousness. He hadn't let himself consider Eywa's warning, message, communication – whatever the hell it was. He had been too scared of what the consequences might be. Now, though, standing here among his people, admiring them for their hardiness, he was confronted head-on by the full meaning of Eywa's words. Sadness enveloped him in a second skin; it seeped into his every pore, infusing into his blood and circulating throughout his body. He felt it clutch at his heart. He could no longer brush the encounter away again. He needed to be alone to confront his thoughts. Jake looked toward the edge of the caldera where roosting ikran had once again returned following the quake. He turned toward the path that ascended the steep side of the depression, looking behind warily to see if she was nearby. Satisfied that Neytiri would not immediately miss him, Jake hurried up the switch-back path that led to the rim of the crater, quickly making it to the top. He paused again to survey the caldera below, making sure he had not been spotted, then moved quietly into the jungle.

Jake walked for a short while, not keeping track of which direction he was moving. His thoughts shifted incessantly, from Eywa's message, to Neytiri, to Norm and the humans, Tom, then to the RDA. Jake couldn't control them, and his mind would not quiet down – his thoughts seemed to be _loud_. They yelled back at him within his own head. When Jake had been human and back on Earth before his injury, he had experienced periodic bouts of Restless Leg Syndrome. It was a strange and infuriating condition, one that invariably manifested itself when he had been exhausted – a frequent occurrence when he had been in the marines. He would lay awake in his rack at night after running, fighting, or training all day unable to sleep. His mind was shut down, and his fatigued body was desperate for some shut-eye. But his damned legs wouldn't turn off. It would start out as a slight restlessness in his feet or calves that would only seem to go away when he flexed his feet or stretched his legs. But stretching would only worsen the sensation more, increasing his need to move and stretch his lower legs. Resisting the urge to move his legs had been much worse than the increased restlessness that resulted from giving in. The more he would move or stretch his muscles, the more he needed to. The sensation – the urge to move and twitch would eventually get so uncontrollable that he would have to get out of bed, no matter how exhausted he was. He often wound up using much of his rack time running to try and ward off the restlessness in his lower extremities.

What Jake was experiencing now was like a mental version of RLS, he thought. It was similar in that the more he thought about Eywa, Neytiri, the RDA, the louder the thoughts in his head became. It was like a feedback loop – a guitar amplifier that he couldn't unplug. He pushed through the jungle faster and faster. He wasn't aware, or didn't care how much noise he made, thinking briefly that he was making as much noise as one of the ROV dozers that had destroyed the Trees of Voices only a few weeks ago. The crescendo in his mind continued to grow in magnitude. Jake began to run. His own thoughts became unbearably loud. What would he do if he couldn't get out of making the decision, would he sacrifice her, would he let the People die? He couldn't lose her! Wouldn't! Jake ran faster as he thought louder. The thoughts within his head were too loud to bear now. He increased his pace further. His body was starting to complain, now. Jake was sprinting through the forest at a pace he knew was impossible to sustain, now. The voices were still growing louder, his thoughts threatened to crack thought his skull, to burst past the confines of his head as they tried to escape. Jake tried to increase his pace just a bit more, one small increment above the impossible speed that he was moving. But the opposite happened.

Jake noticed, with considerable curiosity, that his left foot should have touched the ground immediately following his right. But somehow it had failed to do so. He started to look downward to see what his foot was doing, but before he could quite see what his feet were doing, his right arm made contact with something – resistant. He noticed that neither of his feet were touching the ground now, and his body was beginning to turn slightly to the right. Finally, as his head tilted forward enough to see his feet, he saw that the ground had shifted slightly overhead of where it should have been, and that his legs were splayed slightly apart, and were nowhere near where they should have been. All at once, Jake's vision blurred, and he felt contact with several hard objects. His body twisted in space, and then he felt ground beneath his neck, then his shoulders. His body rotated forward on it's own, falling back, unconsciously, on his military training. Jake rolled forward through the jungle, perhaps four or five somersaults, he thought, finally stopping just shy of the base of a large tree. Jake lay on the ground, completely winded, drawing in the deepest lungfuls of air that his Na'vi body had ever been required to. It was several minutes before his body had regained sufficient oxygen levels that he could even entertain the idea of standing. He lay still for a moment, thinking about what he had been thinking before he had tripped. His mind was calm again – uneasy, but calm. Jake made a mental examination of his parts. No major injuries that he could detect. He pulled his arms from his sides, and pushed himself up onto his elbows. Satisfied that he was not injured, Jake sat up and looked around. There was a small clearing in the brush to his immediate left. It looked strangely familiar. Jake stood finally and brushed off some of the dirt and leaves that covered much of his body. He was sweating profusely, and everything he had just rolled thorough was sticking to his skin.

Jake walked slowly to his left, into the small clearing, and was slightly surprised to see the mobile link shack that had, in part, been his home for much of the last three and a half months. He stared at the broken window for a moment, a sudden flood of emotion welling up in him. The last time he had been here, he was human. He had nearly died, he thought. And that body – the body he had been born with – the small, fragile, crippled body that his mate had saved now lay rotting in a grave not far from this place.

He looked off to his right and saw the AMP suit lying where it had fallen. He could see the fletched ends of two arrows still projecting up into the warm, humid air. Jake slowly walked over to the AMP suit. He had seen much violence in his time in the marines. He was inured to it. The smell took Jake a bit by surprise, though. There were many, many ways to die, and he had seen a great many of them. And as bad as the smell of a decaying body had been to his human senses, it was much worse to his Na'vi sense of smell. Much of the upper portion of Quaritch's body had been stripped of its flesh. His head, both arms, and much of his rib cage were gone, scavenged by nantang, no doubt. The colonel's abdomen had also been opened up. Although, apparently the local fauna did not have high regards for human organs. All of the skin, muscle, and fat had been torn away, along with several ribs. Most of the internal organs remained intact, however, in various stages of decay. Jake could see down into the interior of the AMP suit; Quaritch's corpse was still strapped in. The parts of his body still in operation position within the lower control portions of the suit were largely intact. The fabric of his fatigue trousers had slowed scavenging, but not completely halted it. Much of his lower abdomen was missing. A single, large shiver ran up Jake's upper body as he saw the parts that were missing. "Poor bastard," he whispered aloud.

Jake bent over what remained of the man's corpse, gripped the shaft of an arrow, and plucked it from the ribcage. He repeated this for the remaining bolt, setting the arrows aside with near-reverence – these were the arrows that had saved his life. He would return them to their rightful owner with his undying gratitude. He stood up and looked back toward the shack. He turned toward it and slowly walked to the broken window. Jake looked inside the portable link shack. Broken glass and dried, brown blood lay strewn across the floor. He saw a few of his personal items scattered around – a pair of dirty socks, his old corps t-shirt, the camera and terminal that he recorded his video logs at. He saw the refrigerator door hanging slightly ajar. He climbed carefully through the broken window, stepping easily over the pools of shimmering glass shards. He looked at the photos taped onto the refrigerator window. They were happier times, he thought. He reached up to the window, and gently touched a photo of a beaming, young, innocent Neytiri standing next to her older sister. Jake gently pulled at the corners of the photo, removing it from the glass refrigerator door.

He looked around the space toward Grace's work area. He carefully made his way through the cramped interior to her desk. It was a mess, now. Her scope lay on its side on the floor in pieces, shattered plastic petri dishes, sample containers and papers were scattered about. Jake took a breath and pulled open the center drawer. He felt a tinge of guilt at going through his dead mentor's personal things, but he was curious. And he was looking for something. He had noticed a few times that Grace kept a log or diary, an actual written record of her thoughts. Along with an expensive-looking tortoiseshell pen. Norm had been hit pretty hard by Grace's death, Jake remembered. He was sure that Norm would appreciate something of his mentor's. And he was pretty sure Grace wouldn't mind. The journal, on the other hand…

The middle drawer was stuffed full of junk. Half-empty cigarette packs, rubber bands, pitri lids, microscope slides, a hand lense, a portable tablet with a cracked screen with a sticky note saying 'repair'. He closed the middle drawer and opened the top left drawer. A range-finder, a couple of probes of some kind, and a pair of binoculars. There was a small yellow-covered book below these. Jake pushed the instruments aside and picked up the book. The pen was clipped onto a page about two-thirds of the way through. He did not open the book. He wasn't ready to read it yet. He carefully tucked the photo into the pages of the book, then carefully made his way back to the broken window and hopped over it out into the dappled sunlight.

Jake stood there a moment, listening; smelling the air. He found a spot near the shack and sat down, leaning up against the aluminum outer wall. Alone with his thoughts. When he and Neytiri had met with Mo'at earlier in the day, the Tsahik had shared her opinion that their visions were somehow intertwined. They had occurred very closely together, and they both involved very many beings that were suffering, or who might die. Other than these facts, however, there was not much to unite their 'visions' together – there did not appear to be a unifying thread to Jake.

Jake finally made the conscious effort to let himself think about his talk with Grace-Eywa. He leaned back against the metal shack, drawing his legs up. The time of sorrow is not over, she had said. Her words echoed through his head so lucidly that he almost felt like he was back at the transfer ceremony. Not only could he hear her voice in his head then, but he could feel emotion inside him that had been other than his own. He felt a great unease – a sadness. Had the unease been Grace's? Surely Eywa would not be uneasy or nervous at giving Jake a message. He was curious about this.

She had also said there would be times of both peace and destruction. Goddamn, she had been frustratingly non-specific, Jake thought to himself. "How the fuck is this helping me if I don't know what or when something is going to happen?" he said aloud. How would he be able to make a decision this important without knowing anything about the circumstances ahead of time? Why bother even tell him – why not just wait and let events take their natural course? There had to be a reason for telling him what she had, but what the hell was it?

Jake recalled the non-words that she had spoken directly into his brain. Words that had brought him so much dread: "There will be on the one hand, someone who you love desperately, and on the other, many thousands of People whom you do not know." How could he ever be expected to make that decision? He put his arms up over his knees, and looked absently down at his hands. He had killed so many people with these hands. The people of his birth, of his home. They had not come here to die – most of them had probably come for reasons similar to Jake's: he had had nothing to lose, wanted to do something important, and he had needed the money. Money. No need for that now, he thought. "I wonder if any of them are with Eywa," he said nearly silently to himself.

Jake had decided that the humans had to be stopped, that many would die – and many hundreds of them had died in the battle. He was fairly confident that Eywa did not have humans in mind when she had given him the message. So the thousands she spoke of had to be Na'vi. Why would Eywa allow several thousand of her People to be put into harm's way in the first place? And how could Jake sacrifice his mate, the love of his life, to save them? One life, he thought. One life or several thousand. What is Neytiri's life worth? He knew the answer as soon as he had asked himself that question. Her life was worth everything to him, he thought guiltily – easily worth several thousand nameless, faceless People. Jake sighed loudly, shakily. His eyes had welled up with unspilled, collected tears as he had been thinking about the mess he had inherited – they had just not been able to break out of his eyes yet. He blinked, and their collected volume broke free of his lower eyelids and streamed down his cheeks. Jake sat there thinking about Neytiri for a long time. About all of the things he wanted to do with her – to hunt beside her, to show her his past, to see hers. To have a child with her. To grow old together. The tear-trails down his cheeks had dried as he had sat there in reflection – he had not wiped them away – they were too important to him for some reason. Unfortunately, he knew now. He realized that if he had to make the decision he had been given, if he _had _to choose between his mate and thousands of Na'vi, he would have to choose them over her. It mortified Jake to think that he might have to put his selfishness aside to do what he knew was right – what he had always known was right. Jake sat there among the ruins of his former home and cried.

* * *

"Hey Neytiri, have you seen Jake?" Norm asked, finding Neytiri wandering among the People surveying the very minor damage that the tremor had wrought. She looked up at the human from where she was bent over sorting through the foods that had fallen over earlier. Norm knelt down beside her and began to help collect the important resource into the piles that had been laid out on large leaves.

"No, Norm'an, I have not seen Jake for a while," she said, smiling at Norm for the help he was giving.

"I've just heard from Max. The ground communications satellite – the machine that is above our heads in space that allows us to talk with each other over great distances, has not been damaged or taken as we initially thought. They stopped talking to us because of the quake – tírusikx – because a lot of the equipment had fallen over and been slightly damaged."

"They have managed to re-pare the talking machine?" she asked.

"Yeah, everything is back to normal back there now. Not too much damage that they can see, kinda like here. Everyone is just a bit shaken up – uh, nervous," he added, thinking she might confuse shaken with shaking.

"I am glad no one was hurt," she said.

"That makes two of us. There aren't a lot of us here, you know? Anyway, Max just told me they're sending out a chopper to pick me up – should be here in about an hour or so. I want to thank you for your hospitality, and allowing me to stay here with the People in my human body. It has been a great honor."

"No, Norm'an, the honor is ours," she said pausing to look directly at Norm. She stood up, and Norm, following her cue, did the same. "You have been a good friend to the People. There are those among us who are weary to have a tawtute among us, no matter who it is or what they have done for us. Most are happy for you to be with us. You fought bravely to defend our home…" she said, pausing to place her hand on Norm's shoulder, "…_your_ home from those who wanted only to take from it. To hurt or to kill anything who was in their way."

"Thank you for the kind words, Neytiri. You have been a good friend as well." Norm looked around the camp trying to see Jake. Unable to sight him, he turned back to Neytiri, "I hope Jake is back before I leave – we should talk a bit about what the RDA is up to."

"I will try to find him," she said looking around.

"Thanks. I'm just going to go pack my stuff up," Norm said, then walked toward the nearby corner that he had occupied for the last few days. "If I don't see you again before I go," he called back, "Thanks for everything."

"You are most welcome, Norm," she called back to the lone human in the Well of Souls. Neytiri walked toward the Tree of Souls, where she could see her mother talking with two of the hunters. Perhaps they would know where Jake was.

* * *

Jake had been staring absently off into space for quite some time. He was unsure of exactly how much time had passed since he had sat here, but he realized when he tried to move that his butt was asleep. He rolled slightly onto one hip to allow the blood to flow back into his sleeping glute, and then repeated the action in the opposite direction. Feeling came back rapidly, but then the sharp tingling pin-pricks started. He sat there for a few more moments, suffering through the after-effects of his sleeping ass, then slowly stood up by pushing his legs outward while sliding up the metal of the shack exterior he had been leaning against for who knew how long. He bent over and picked up the bright yellow field book that had been Grace's journal with the pen clipped onto several pages inside. He slowly walked over to collect Neytiri's arrows. He realized, as he looked around the small clearing, that he was not sure if anyone had said a prayer to Eywa for the thanator that his mate had ridden when she had come to his aid – and subsequently had nearly been killed by Quaritch. A cold feeling grew over him as he thought of what would have happened had he been just a few moments later. He walked slowly over to the Palulukan's remains. It too had been set upon my scavengers, but it was still much more intact that Quaritch's body was. The thick armored skin played a role in preserving it, no doubt. Scavengers had managed to start dismantling the huge corpse, however, by using the small chinks in the mighty predator's armor. Its four respiratory openings had been enlarged substantially, and the tough, thick finger-nail like armor around the openings had been gnawed to allow access to the flesh inside. A large hollowed-out space had been made inside the chest cavity on the side of the animal that was facing upward. Viperwolves, Jake thought. They had probably gnawed the hide back to the point where they could get their heads inside the corpse to rip away large chunks of flesh. Jake let out an audible sound as he moved closer to the decaying animal and took in the full olfactory effects of its rotting state. He knelt down in front of its massive head, and reached out a hand to touch its rough hide.

"Oel ngati kameie tsmukan, ulte ngaru seiyi ireiyo terìng ngeyä tìrey. Ngari hu Eywa saleu tirea," Jake said aloud respectfully. Slowly, he removed his hand from the thanator's head. He looked down at the long, sharp claws. Claws of another palulukan – perhaps this one – had nearly ended his life during his first experience in the wilds of Pandora. Although, Eywa had probably meant for that to happen, he thought. She had probably directed the beast to chase him to the cliff so that he would run into Neytiri. Jake reached to his chest and removed his hunting knife from its sheath. He moved closer to the huge animal. "[I'm sorry, my brother, but these you need no longer.]" He put down the arrows and book he was carrying in his other hand, and placed the blade across the animal's three front fingers. With a swift downward shove of the blade with his palm, he severed the digits close to the back of the claws. He repeated the action for the thumb. "[I thank you again for this gift. Your rider will thank you also, you will not be forgotten.]" Jake picked up the arrows and the small book again and stood up. He turned around to head back to the Well of Souls, and his heart nearly stopped. His mate stood silently a few meters in front of him with a slight grin on her face.

"Whoa," was all he could get out of his mouth before she lunged forward to embrace him. Jake had been distant from her since he had ceased being uniltiranyu and had become one of the People. Even though it may have ruined the surprise gift he had probably planned for her, she could not resist being close to her Jake right now. She squirmed into him, trying to get as close to him as she could. Jake closed his arms around her, cognizant of where the sharp ends of the arrows were. They stood there in the clearing where each had saved the other's life, clutching each other for several moments before finally Neytiri withdrew partially and looked up at Jake.

"Norm'an will be leaving soon. A chop'ter is coming to pick him up." She said at last.

"How does he know that – did the radio start working again?" Jake asked.

"Yes, Max's voice told Norm'an to be ready. The flying machine will be here soon – we should go now."

"Okay. Let's go." She turned to walk away in front of him. He started after her with a mischievous grin. When he got within a few feet of her, he reached out his hand and firmly squeezed her ass. She turned with a feigned expression of indignant surprise on her face, which quickly turned into a wry smile. She giggled loudly and turned toward the direction of the Well of Souls.

"[We must run if you wish to see your friend before he leaves,]" she called back to Jake as she broke into a leisurely jog.

"Bring it," Jake yelled in English, sprinting past her.

* * *

Norm heard the chopper approaching long before he saw it. The dual, dual rotary blades made a completely unnatural noise in the otherwise nearly pristine environment. Norm had seen a few pieces of wreckage and some burned patches of forest while he had been here, and he knew that many, many more pieces of twisted metal and charred ground were out there. His thoughts turned to Trudy as he looked out toward the horizon in the direction of the far-off sound. On the ground near his feet was a black duffel with a spare exopack strapped to one of the fabric handles. He wore a pale brown, genuine leather satchel over his shoulder that rested across his opposite side. It had been a gift from his parents when he had graduated from university with his Ph.D. Norm was sure it was impossibly expensive, but his parents only grinned and said that it wasn't every day that their only child graduated with a doctorate. Norm had smiled and accepted the gift and given them both an enormous hug. They had been killed one night later that same year when their car's automatic drive had failed to disengage at a bridge construction site. They had plunged thirty feet into the polluted Delaware River, been knocked unconscious, and drowned. Norm had been recruited by the Avatar division of the RDA shortly afterward.

The samson came into sight above a small ridge off in the distance just as Jake an Neytiri arrived. Norm noticed Jake holding some arrows as well as what he immediately recognized as Dr. Augustine's personal journal and something that looked like very large fingers. As Jake got closer, Norm recognized them as belonging to a thanator. "I can guess where you've been," he said as the pair got close enough to hear him over the din of the fast-approaching chopper. "Are those the arrows that stopped him?" Norm said gesturing to the bolts that Jake carried.

"Yep. Want one as a souvenir?" he asked his friend.

"Tempting, but no, I don't think so. Those thanator claws are enormous!" Norm exclaimed. "Can I see one for a minute?"

"Sure," Jake said, passing one of the large raptorial claws to his friend. "Careful, they're pointy," he said, smiling.

"Wow." Norm marveled at the claw as the wind around them began to pick up and the flora began to whip around under the influence of the Samson's rotor wash. "You must have been scared silly when that thing chased you," he nearly had to yell to be heard over the rotors now.

"Well, it wasn't fun," Jake yelled back, "but I realized today that Eywa was probably telling the palulukan to drive me toward that cliff. I had a blind date," he yelled, looking toward Neytiri. Her expression indicated that she didn't understand the reference. "I'll explain later," Jake said to Neytiri as norm handed the digit back.

"Jake, we really need to talk about the RDA, like _soon_," Norm said in a raised voice into Jake's ear as the Samson set down with a loud thud. Norm turned to look through the cockpit window at the relatively inexperienced pilot who was also a lab tech, and shook his head. "If I don't die on the way back to Hell's Gate," he added with a scowl. "They're upto something up there," he yelled to both Jake and Neytiri, "and it would benefit all of us, human and Na'vi alike, to try and figure out what A-S-A-P. And plan accordingly."

"I was going to ask you about that too, but I've been a bit distracted lately Norm, sorry," Jake yelled back.

"Hey, I understand completely. With the new job, the new wife," he said grinning at Neytiri, "the new body, and a few hundred People to look after, you've got your hands full." Jake thanked his friend mentally for not bringing up his communication with Eywa. "We should get together soon, though."

"How about tomorrow?" Jake yelled.

"Tomorrow would be great!" Norm replied, smiling, seeming a bit surprised by the timeframe Jake suggested, given his commitments.

"Tomorrow it is," Jake answered. "Hey, before you take off, there's something I want you to have." Jake turned to Neytiri and handed her the arrows, freeing up his hands a bit. He opened up Dr. Augustine's journal and carefully unclipped the pen from several pages. "This thing is way too small for me to use," he joked with his friend. "I think Grace would have liked you to have a bit of something personal of hers. This would have just eventually disappeared out there, Norm. It's a _really_ nice pen."

"Wow, thanks," Norm replied, taking the pen from Jake's outstretched hand. He looked at the pen distractedly, turning it around in his hands, hefting it. "It's heavier than it looks," he added finally.

"You should get going, Jake said. "Your ride's waiting, and your driver looks a bit impatient."

"Yeah, okay." Norm stepped forward and gave Neytiri a hug. "Oel Ngati kmeie, princess," he said beaming. "You," he said turning to shake Jake's outstretched hand, "I'll see tomorrow." Norm turned away from them, ducked down slightly, and ran forward to the waiting chopper. He strapped himself in to one of the seats in the rear compartment because the pilot was not wearing an exopack, and put on a headset. He said something into the mouthpiece, and Jake heard the turbines throttle up and the Samson lifted with a slight lurch into the air.

After the chopper was out of sight, Jake turned to Neytiri and took her free hand in his. "Have I ever told you how much I love you?" he asked his mate.

"You have," she said with a grin.

"Well, then, have I ever told you how hungry I am?"

"You'll have to wash some meat before you can eat," she said. "Unless you still like to eat dirt as much as you did when you first learned to 'ride' pa'li," she said bursting out in a fit of giggles.

"You really crack yourself up, don't you?" he asked, smiling widely as the couple turned to walk back to the Well of Souls in the warm afternoon light.

* * *

**1.7 Flee.**

_Well of souls encampment, outside, pre-dawn._

Jake awoke nearly as early as he had told himself to when he had fallen asleep the previous night. He had been an early riser for most of his adult life by necessity – the marines generally frowned on sleeping in. He had been sleeping right against his mate, and so had to gently lift his right arm off of her. As he did, she moved her right shoulder.

"Sorry," he said softly into her ear, "I tried not to wake you." She said nothing. Jake propped himself up on his elbow, and peered over her shoulder into Neytiri's quiescent face. She was still asleep. Relieved slightly that he had not roused his sleeping mate and friend, Jake sat up as quietly as he could. The thick moss sleeping pad that they had made together was doing a great job of isolating their bodies from the heat-robbing bedrock that composed the floor of most of the Well. It was also pretty damned comfortable, he thought. It appeared to be made of two different types of moss – one that was tall, very fluffy and soft, and kind of resembled miniature Christmas trees a little. The other kind was shorter – you could only really see it by pushing aside the taller kind and looking down into the mat. The smaller mosses were much more plentiful than the tall ones, and grew in the spaces surrounding their stems. They were roundish, rather stiff and were very resistant to being compressed. Together, the two types of moss provided the ideal material to both cushion and insulate a body from the rock the camp was constructed atop.

Maybe 'made' was too generous a word for what they had done, he thought touching the moss matt as his thoughts drifted off to their weird, stressful, wonderful first night together. It had been late in the afternoon by the time Neytiri had brought Jake and his chair, and then with some assistance, his avatar, back to the Well of Souls after the Txan Tsam 'Aw Trr. Far too late to make the trip to Hell's gate to demand the surrender of the remaining humans. Instead, Jake had nervously spent the night in the Well of Souls, with the People. In his human body. He was afraid of them – not necessarily because of what they might do to him, but because he didn't want them to see how weak he was in his damaged human body. They had all just lost friends and loved ones in a terribly costly battle, too, Jake recalled, so, yeah – perhaps he _had_ been a little afraid of what they might do to him. Neytiri had put aside everything that first night to comfort him. She had had to 'explain' to several Na'vi who he was, what he had done for the People. Often her 'explanations' were accompanied by a hissing Na'vi huntress crouched over him in a strangely erotic protective pose. It had been the confrontation with the olo'eyktan of the zize'Nantang clan, one of the smaller clans from the north that had answered Toruk's call. Jake's presence on Neytiri's back as she walked by Tson'ten had ignited a fury from the olo'eyktan that had resulted in Jake being flung to the ground and held at knifepoint while blows were exchanged between his mate and the olo'eyktan. It was Jake that had diffused the situation that time by screeching out a loud call into the afternoon sky. He had not been certain of whether or not his idea would work at the time, but Jake was certain that Tson'ten would not be among the living today if it had not. Toruk had answered the call with a far-off cry of his own, giving pause to his captors. Moments later, panicked ikran fled the Well as the huge crimson beast swooped in to land in the tight confines of the Well. It let out a scream that gave Jake goose bumps as it landed close to Jake. The warriors of the Nantang clan had scrambled away in fear, nearly forgetting their weapons as the mighty beast appeared. All of the several hundred People immediately surrounding them grew silent at the sight of the _human_ who had obviously summoned the mighty Toruk. There were a hundred gasps of surprise when Toruk moved close to Jake, and bent low his neck so that Jake could run his hand along the beast's lower jaw. Toruk looked directly at the Nantang olo'eyktan on the ground beneath a glaring Neytiri, and repeated his great scream. Jake recalled how Tson'ten had later come to find him to offer an apology to both himself and Neytiri. He had explained to the puzzlingly odd-looking mated pair before him, with great difficulty, that he had a daughter who had not returned following the battle. He explained that he had lost control of his emotions when he had seen Jake, and that he was heartbroken. Jake sadly recalled how some of her body had been found a few days later.

After the drama had finally ceased and People returned to their preparations for the evening celebrations, Neytiri had finally been able to take Jake to a nearby stream to collect some of the moss for their bedding that evening. Jake was at once thrilled and mortified to be with her in this place in his human body. He profoundly valued the loving protection she given him; the quick, sweet kisses she had randomly and often given to him; and the genuinely fond touches she had paid him. She loved him, he understood, no matter what body he inhabited.

He had sat there beside the stream, watching his scratched, bloodied, very happy mate as she explained the properties of the bedding material to him, telling him how both types of moss were but different parts of the same plant. She took out her knife, and used it to cut a rectangular-shaped outline in a huge sheet of moss. Jake could see where others had done the same. Nearby were large square patches of bare rock adjacent to larger moss-covered ones. She gently pried the rootlets of the moss free of the rock along the bottom of the cut she had made, and then slowly, carefully, rolled the entire sheet up into a sleeping bag-like bundle, securing it with a small piece of vine. She explained how the Na'vi always left large gaps between where the sleeping mats were harvested to allow the moss to grow back.

When she had carried him back to their encampment near dusk, he had received a many minutes long applause from the gathered People who now fully understood who he was – what he had given. The loud cacophony of cheers and yells of support were accompanied later by a lavish feast that had been prepared in his honor – apparently when Neytiri had taken him away to collect their sleeping mat. He had been rendered nearly speechless by the spectacle of the thousands of Na'vi accepting him in his human form. Neytiri beamed from below him, turning her head to look up at him with moist eyes as he held firmly onto her shoulders. They celebrated him as Toruk Makto and as one of their own, even in his frail, nearly helpless wreck of a body.

Later in the evening as he lay awake beside his beautiful blue mate, she had cradled him in her impossibly oversized arms before falling asleep behind him. This was one of the most precious memories Jake had collected during his life, and he knew he would carry it – unchanged and intact – with him until his end. He had lain nearly naked in the arms of the one Person in the universe that he completely and unconditionally loved and trusted, unable to fall asleep for much of the night. He had listened to the sounds of the forest all around him, taking great pleasure in feeling Neytiri's warm, bare skin against his back. Shoulders. Arms. With each rhythmical, unconscious breath she drew in as she slept behind him, he felt her right breast touch his neck, with each exhalation it left his skin. He felt her breath softly weave through the fine hairs on the back of his neck. He was at once both frustrated and relieved that he had been rendered unable to have sex by the injury that had put him in his chair. Even though he could not feel anything from just above his navel to the tips of his toes, he wanted her desperately. The mechanics of their bodies would have made making love a bit difficult, Jake had thought then, even if his human body had had functioning genitalia – even if he had had the use of his legs. Now as he sat there looking over every inch of her body, he wished that his human body had been fully functional that night. He could have made it work, he thought.

Looking over her body, he noticed that her legs were moving slightly every so often. Jake moved closer to watch her dream. If it was another of her vision-dreams, he would stay with her as long as she needed him. A soft moaning sound came from her throat, then she stilled once again and her breathing regained its normal, deep rhythmical cadence. Relieved that Neytiri had regained restful sleep, Jake turned to his right and picked up the bright yellow mining field book that had been Grace's journal. He didn't want to read it – not yet, anyhow. He leafed quickly through it, opening it to the pages where he had tucked the photograph of Neytiri and her sister. He looked at the photo, smiling down at the two smiling sisters in his hand. They were both so strikingly beautiful, both so similar in their features. Had he not known the taller of the two girls was Sylwanin, Jake would have guessed she was Neytiri; Neytiri was much smaller and younger in the photo. Jake still thought she was hot though, and even at her age in the photo, she was still much taller than his old human body – even if it had been able to stand upright on its tip-toes. Jake turned back to his left and carefully reached over his sleeping mate, placing the photograph of the two girls in front of her. He propped it up slightly against a high spot in the mat so that she would see it as soon as she awoke. As silently as he was able to, Jake turned away from his sleeping spouse and crawled out of their shelter.

It was still dark, but there was a dim glow on the horizon just above the rim of the caldera. Jake looked up to see a gibbous Polyphemus spread out above him, it's great blue spot in a similar position as it always was. Around him, the jungle was eerily silent. The calls of the nantang that often pierce the blue glowing night were gone now, the nocturnal pack hunters having long returned to their dens. The cooking fires were aglow, and Jake made his way toward them purposefully, this would be a long day he thought to himself.

* * *

She had been walking for some time, aware that the place she was in was foreign, yet somehow vaguely familiar at the same time – almost as if she had been there as a child. It was breezy here, much breezier than where her clan lived, she thought to herself, and the plants were all different, peculiar. They were smaller and stockier, there were less of them, and they were dominated by low, long-leafed plants that made a pleasant rustling sound as they were constantly blown about by the wind. There were clouds over the horizon in one direction where there were no mountains – huge tall clouds and bright blue skies, not the hazy skies and constant low clouds that hung just over the forest that she was used to. She turned her head to look in the opposite direction. Very far away in the distance, she could see tiny mountains. Were these the mountains that she knew, Neytiri wondered? The sky in that direction was paler blue, not the vivid hue on the mountainless horizon, and the clouds were low. This appeared to be the direction of her home, she thought hazily.

She continued walking in the direction she had been going for as long as she recalled. She did not know where she had come from, or toward what she was going, but there was a distinct attraction – a pull toward something that she could not easily resist. She looked down at the ground as she walked forward. There were enumerable small creatures crawling over the pale brown, dusty surface. These too, were familiar to her, but different than the ones she knew well. Some were more colorful, others dull. Some were large, while others were small and less obvious. Where their legs had contacted patches of the dusty ground that was not itself covered by low, small plants, their delicate tracks could be traced for short distances. They appeared to walked this way and that, without concern. Neytiri looked down at her own feet, curious about her own tracks, and saw that she had been crushing the small creatures without care. Horrified, she looked back toward where she had come. Each of her steps had crushed at least one of them; each track contained a green and orange-brown slick of liquefied internal parts of the small beetle-like things. She stopped dead in her tracks, afraid of taking another step, saying a short prayer to Eywa.

The wind about her grew confused; it changed direction several times in rapid succession, growing alternately slower and faster seemingly at random, while the temperature appeared to fluctuate. Abruptly, the wind changed direction for a final time, becoming constant from that direction. After a few minutes, it had grown cooler against her skin. It smelled different. As she stood there, pelted by the growing wind and confounded by what her next step should be, she noticed that the horizon in front of her where the tall fluffy clouds were had changed. There was now a low mountain range there, somewhere very far off in the distance.

Neytiri looked down once more at the small beetle-things that she had been inadvertently crushing moments before. They streamed past her as fast as their six limbs could move their bodies. She stood there, frozen, watching them move past. The ones that could fly suddenly took to the air in one well-choreographed single movement, as if they had a collective consciousness and had made the decision together. Or they had been told to fly away from this place by Eywa, she thought suddenly. Neytiri could feel their dread, their fear – if she tried. She stood there and tried to desperately to See what they were frightened of, why they were running away. She closed her eyes and asked, then concentrated on the small echo she heard in her mind. Neytiri asked Eywa for her help, and slowly, the thought-voice in her head began to grow in strength and resolution. The other-voice had many innumerable small tendrils. She recognized after a few moments that each was the thought of a single, tiny being. She imagined that she could see their thoughts from behind her closed eyelids; they were expressed as a living, tangled, chaotic stream of softly glowing white particles trailing orange-hot streamers behind them. The longer that Neytiri focused her attention on them, the more tightly focused the stream of their collective thoughts became. Eventually, she was able to tune the stream of thoughts into a single strand that undulated slightly; it moved past her in a twisting, writhing path. She reached out to the strand, she touched it. As her mind touched the moving tendril of collective thoughts, she was instantaneously debilitated by their overpowering, concentrated single thought. It was repeated by an impossible myriad of uncountable individuals.

They were running from the mountain range.

Neytiri opened her eyes with a start, gasping. She was staring into the eyes of her beloved Sylwanin.

* * *

**1.8 Bodiless.**

_Hell's Gate compound, morning._

Jake descended rapidly on his ikran, waiting until they were close to the ground before suddenly adjusting their attitude upward. Their descent was then slowed as his ikran began rapid braking wingbeats before extending its blue rear legs and gently touching down on the quiet tarmac. Jake dismounted his ikran in a single fluid motion by swinging over and around his mount's left shoulder. He stood there in the warm sunshine for a moment, stroking the rough blue hide of his ikran as he communicated to the animal that he would be here for several hours and that it would have time to go hunting for a meal. When Jake broke his bond with the beautiful beast, it let out a piercing screech and took to the air with a few barely constrained wing beats to search for prey.

He turned to walk toward the compound, touching the transmit button of the throat mike as he did. "Ok Norm, I'm here. I'm heading toward the ambient room airlock."

"Roger, Jake. See you in a few," Norm replied in his ear a few moments later.

The tarmac looked strangely lonely without the hustle and bustle that had been the normal state of affairs when the RDA had been here. There were a few aircraft scattered about. Jake had seen what most looked like now - they lay in various states of damage not that far away on the jungle floor. Glancing around as he walked, Jake could see only three or four small rotary-wing aircraft that appeared to be serviceable, although there may have been more in the large hanger buildings.

Jake made his way around the corner of the building toward the ambient room airlock. It was on the other side of the complex, where the avatar longhouse and training areas were located. As he got closer to the door, Max, Norm and a human female that Jake recognized but did not know emerged from the door wearing exopacks. Norm hurried over to his friend and thrust out his hand in greeting.

"Hey Jake," Norm said excitedly.

Jake took hold of Norm's outstretched hand and carefully, firmly gripped it. "Hey guys," Jake said. "How's it going?"

"Well, not completely as expected," Max said with a slight smile.

Jake gave him a slight nod – that was why he was here after all. "Hey, how are you doing," he asked the blonde female, "Uh – sorry, I've forgotten your name," he finished slightly embarrassed.

"Good thanks – at least for now," Alene said. "No worries, mate – name's Alele. We had never formally met or been introduced after you arrived here. I think the first time we actually met was just after you'd been captured by the Na'vi - after having nearly been eaten by a thanator. It was quite an exciting story."

Jake gently took the hand that Alene offered. "Well, good to finally meet you then," he said shaking her hand. Then turning slightly to address the whole group, "Did you guys have any damage from that shaker?"

"Not much up in OPS," Alene said. "A couple of the terminals were rattled around a bit, but the satellite link came out of alignment, and we temporarily lost power to the shortwave transmitters.

"That explains the radio blackout," Jake said.

"Most of the stuff around the lab is secured to the walls or the floor," Norm added. "Minor quakes are a fairly common occurrence on Pandora. We experience quite a bit of tidal pull from Polyphemus. The other large moons also give us a bit of a tug. The gravitational forces together keep the inside of Pandora pretty stirred up. The crust under our feet is only about twelve kilometers deep – that's about half the crustal thickness back on Earth. Because the crust is pretty thin, and the mantle – the interior of the moon - is pretty liquid, minor quakes are fairly common," Norm said.

"It's actually been pretty calm around here for the past several months, tectonically speaking of course," Max said. "But, we've had some whoppers here in the past. The one yesterday was a minor one. It seemed worse than it should have because we have a lot less people with technical expertise to get things back up and running. We had to have a powwow to get the power turned back on to the COM systems. Turns out it was just a failsafe that tripped. Took five PhD's to figure out the problem was just a tripped breaker!" Max said with a smile looking at Norm.

"Right, so were we set up?" Jake said with a nervous, slightly impatient smile.

"Right to it then," Norm said. "We've moved a few terminals into the ambient room, as well as a bit of furniture. There should be plenty of room for everyone – just don't get creeped out by my body, it's being treated in there now." Norm and the other two humans turned and moved through the Na'vi sized airlock door that had stood slightly ajar as they had chatted just outside. Since the ambient room was at normal Pandoran pressure and gas levels, the large door was just a single, not a double airlock. Jake followed them through into the short corridor that lead into the main ambient room. Jake recalled the first and only time he had been in this room. It was when he had first linked into his avatar body. It had been the first time he had stood on 'his' own legs for years. As he recalled how nervous he had made Max and the lab techs, a small smile came to his face.

"Hey Max," Jake asked, "did that female tech, you know – the one I nearly walked over that first time I linked up – is she still here, or did she leave?"

"Yeah, she's still here. She's one of the avatar medical specialists. She's been working on Norm's _other_ body. In fact, she might be working on Norm now. There are only fifteen of us left, and we don't get much company," Max said, smiling broadly. "So I'm sure you'll get a chance to meet her, and everyone else as well. You know, I don't think you ever apologized to her, did you?" he asked, his smile turning wry.

"Man, give a guy a break," Jake said shaking his head. "You know, you guys should have known that giving a cripple a shiny new set of blue legs might be asking for trouble," Jake said with a smile.

"Yeah, good point. I'll keep that in mind for future arrivals," Max turned back and said as they entered the ambient room, "who are not really that far off."

The room had change fairly substantially since Jake had been here last time. The avatar 'bottles' were gone, and Norm's avatar was lying atop a gurney against one wall. It was connected to what looked like the same monitoring equipment that had been connected to Jake the last time he had been here. A short woman was looking at the readouts on the equipment as they had entered, but had turned to watch the group as they had filed into the room. Jake recognized her with an embarrassed look.

"Hey," Jake said with a slight smile on his face, "I just asked these guys whether you were still here or not. I just wanted to say sorry for nearly walking over you when I first got here."

The avatar tech gave him a broad smile through her exopack, "Yeah, well, it's not every day you get your legs back, right?" Then, after a bit of a silent pause, "I don't think we ever formally met, you were pretty busy right from day one. I'm Lisa – Lisa Wright."

"I just told these guys that. Hey, how's you patient doing?"

"He'll make it. He might not regain full range of motion in the left arm, but we still have a couple of reconstructive surgeries to do." She paused for a second, her smile broadening a little, "So how does it feel?"

Jake knew immediately what she was referring to – he had anticipated the question. "I dunno if I can really sense all that much of a difference. Sometimes I think I might be able to smell a bit better. I think hearing is about the same. But I can definitely _feel_ more. I don't know how to explain it – it's like there is… something else that I was missing before. But I still can't tell you what it is. I guess the easy answer is that it's Eywa. But I'm still not completely sure what Eywa actually is. Jake looked down into Lisa's eyes. "Sorry I can't do any better than that."

"No problem. I'm glad that you're ok – you really did right by them, you know?"

"Yeah, thanks," Jake said as Lisa turned back to Norm's avatar after giving Norm a quick glance and a smile. Jake thought he could see something between them, but he wasn't sure – could be just a doctor-patient thing. Jake turned back to Max who was saying something into his throat mike.

"You ready to start?" Max asked, turning back to Jake.

"How are we going to do this?"

"I've just called everyone into the bio lab, they should start showing up any time. We've set up a couple of chairs – sorry we don't have any avatar-sized, oops – I mean _Na'vi_-sized desks. This room has an open-ended two way intercom system with the bio lab. When everyone gets here, we'll get right down to it. I know you've got a flight to catch afterward, so we'll try to make this as quick as possible. I'll go over what we know, what we think we know, and what we think we think."

"Alright," Jake said.

"Here we go," Alene said. "The first three – nope, four just walked in."

"Okay," Max said to Jake, "we'll get started any time, why don't we get comfortable. I put a water pitcher by your chair, and there are a couple pieces of fruit that we picked from outside for you there as well – just in case this thing becomes a marathon."

"Alright," Jake said. "And Max, thanks." Max nodded as he made his way to the chairs that were positioned opposite the large observation windows of the bio lab. Jake followed, sitting down in the large chair on one side of the bank of three. Jake couldn't help smiling at the image of the three bears fairytale that briefly went though his mind. Just as he had taken his seat, Max stood up and announced that everyone had arrived.

"Thanks for coming so quickly everyone. This is obviously a situation that will have ramifications for everyone on Pandora, human and Na'vi alike. It's in all our best interests to figure out what the hell Parker and the RDA are up to, and to think about and plan for the future. Obviously, Pandora has resources, and potential profits, that humanity and the RDA won't want to easily give up on. They're almost certainly going to keep coming, so we should think about as many possible scenarios as we can come up with, as well as possible ways to allay some of these. But first, I want to start with what we know as of right now.

"As far as we can tell, the ISV Venture Star has left Pandora orbit. Our orbital sensors are capable of detecting any large orbiting structures, and she's definitely not here." Max paused to look at the faces that peered back through the glass at him. "We lost our only link to home as well – the DCOMSAT was removed from its orbit by a Valkyerie shuttle. We know who was behind that maneuver. So, as of right now, we now have no means of communication with either Earth or the incoming ISV's.

"All of our other satellites are still currently operating normally, and remain under our control. But who knows for how long. Right now we have four other satellites in orbit around Pandora – a geo survey satellite, a planetside comms satellite, the orbital imaging array and a mapping satellite that may be more valuable as an antique. There's another satellite in orbit around Polyphemus – it's a research platform, pretty pictures mostly. There's the deep orbital monitoring array – keeps track of meteors, comets, and space-faring vehicles. Unfortunately, the DCOMSAT was the relay to these outer satellites, so as of right now, consider the outer satellites off-line."

"Max," interrupted an unfamiliar voice from the biolab. Jake could see through the window that it was a young, nerdy-looking lab tech that he had seen a few times around the bio lab. He was fairly short, even for a human, skinny, and had short blonde hair. "Can't we just send out a radio transmission if we want to be heard by Earth? We have quite a few parabolic antennae, all we have to do is modify one of the transmitters to amplify the transmission and we should easily have enough power to get signal back to Earth."

"Alright, good," Max said. "How long do you think it will take to modify one of the transmitters?"

"Not long," the tech replied. "A day or two tops."

"Do you have everything you need to do it?"

"Should be able to find what I need around. There are a ton of spare electronics parts in the military supply stores. I should be able to find what I need there for a rudimentary signal amplifier."

"Great. Okay, so we can get communications back, and we can do it so that the RDA can't intercept the signal. Perfect." Max smiled for the first time since he had begun speaking. "So that is what we _know_.

"Norm and I did a bit of brainstorming last night to try and figure out what Parker might be up to. We tried very hard to put ourselves in his shoes – which is, trust me, something that's uncomfortable to do even for just a thought exercise." A low round of laughs followed his last comment. "Norm, you want to do the honors on this one?"

"Sure," Norm said, standing up. Max turned and sat down in his chair. "We thought about this last night for quite awhile," Norm said as he started pacing back and forth. "If Parker still has fight left in him, which is pretty obvious at this point, then he probably wouldn't leave the Alpha Centauri system. Fortunately for us, he let us know that he wasn't – I'm not sure if this was because of stupidity on his part, or to try and sow the seeds of confusion. Parker isn't stupid, so I can't see him grabbing a satellite and letting us know he's still here if he didn't need to say something to someone. It's the content of that message that scares me the most. So he needed to tell someone something, and it was important enough that he didn't care about letting us know he's hanging around.

"My working hypothesis right now is that he's going to hole up in orbit around one of Polyphemus' other moons and wait for reinforcements to arrive. If I had to guess, I'd say he's probably going to park around Epimethus in an orbit that obscures him from us. We went through the advance manifest for the inbound ISV. It's largely a supply ship. It should have very few military personnel aboard, miners and support personnel mostly. There is one piece of worrisome information in the manifest, though. It appears there might be a new weapons platform being rolled out. One that we have no information at all about.

So, Parker got his ass handed to him a few weeks ago. He doesn't have much in the way of SECOPS people left. Even with the incoming ISV, he'll have less than a hundred military people. If he presses the miners into service, maybe another fifty total. They might not fight, though. Hard to say on that one. The one piece of the puzzle that we just can't figure out is how the new vehicles might come into play. If they're another chopper, I don't think he'll try anything until the three year ISV shows up. That one is a military resupply ship. It will have replacements for SECOPS people that were supposed to have rotated home. They'll probably be pretty easy to get rallied up for a fight. If, on the other hand, it turns out that these Lockheed LF-78v's are something that Parker feels will give him a tactical advantage, he might push ahead with some kind of campaign sooner, rather than later."

Jake felt his heart drop at the mention of the new hardware. He knew what they were, or rather, what their predecessors were. Back in Nigeria, they had been employed effectively as a counter-insurgency platform. Images of half-people came back into his head. He had suppressed many of the graphic images of war a long time ago, but the mention of these machines that he knew all too well allowed the gruesome mental snapshots to slide back into his head. He was seeing people ripped to pieces. A headless woman lay slumped against a concrete block building, a bloodied crying infant lay in her lap, helpless. A guerilla fighter lay torn in half a few meters from her feet, his torso bisected by an explosion that had detonated within his chest cavity. All around Jake were the remains of women and children – a few insurgents mixed in. Just enough o make the target 'worthwhile'.

Jake stood up suddenly, trying to get the flashback out of his head. Disoriented, he turned around to steady himself against the wall.

"Jake you okay buddy," Norm asked with a concerned look.

"I've been better, Norm," Jake said partially doubled over. Jake had seen what the Lockheed-Saab LF-77v Kestrel was capable of, the kind of damage they could inflict on a dug in, well-equipped, well-trained enemy. The Na'vi were none of those things – they would be slaughtered. Jake felt an overpowering weakness take hold of him. The People were his responsibility now, but what could he do about THIS? His knees began to quake slightly and he knelt down on the floor of the ambient room before they could give out. Everyone in the small room looked around at each other, then toward Norm and Max, who were both looking at Jake with a look of shock and concern. Norm looked at Alene, then Max, and then rushed over to Jake's side. "What's wrong, buddy?" Norm asked his friend. "What is it Jake?"

Jake didn't say anything for nearly a full minute. When he spoke, it was with a weary voice. Jake looked up with pained eyes at his human friend. "Norm," he said finally, "LF is a military identifier. It stands for light fighter. They are self-powered, semi-autonomous, remotely piloted, heavily armed killing machines." Jake paused to look around the room. Everyone he could see from his position on the floor had a look of shock, anger, or sadness – or a combination of all three. "They use them to exterminate well dug in, well-supplied guerillas and insurgents. They have enough sensors to detect the movement of a fly from five miles up. Once the target is acquired, they shoot these precision guided micro missiles that turn people inside out. There's no way to defend against them. We're fucked." The entire gathered crowd was silent.

* * *

"[Neytiri! Come quickly! Jake is returned from the camp of the sky people, and there is something wrong! He is asking for you and for the Tsahik!]" Peyral said urgently as she reached Neytiri. Neytiri had been praying at the Tree of Souls, asking for guidance about the dreams that she had been having. It bothered her that her dreams were so frustratingly non-specific. How would she be able to act on her dreams if Eywa gave her no clear vision? Neytiri could not see how she could do anything given the dreams she had received. Peyral's sudden appearance had at least distracted Neytiri from her own problem.

"[Calm, my friend. What has happened?]" Neytiri asked.

"[Jake has returned from sky people camp. I can see fear in him of something. He asks for you and for your mother. I think the sky people are coming back!]"

Neytiri's ears flattened against her head and her expression turned from surprise to anger. She jumped to her feet and after an exasperated growl, followed Peyral quickly back to where Jake had just released his ikran to roost.

"I see you, my Jake," she said as she grew closer to her mate. She could see the concern on his face, and when he didn't say anything back right away, she knew something bad had happened. "What is it Jake?" she asked growing impatient. "What has Norm and Max told you?"

"Neytiri, I don't know what to do. Something bad is coming. Something very bad. What does the olo'eyktan do when he has this kind of information? Is there some kind of council that I should summon?"

"Let us first talk to mother, she will then guide you further. But Jake, what is it?"

"Please, Neytiri," Jake said, "I don't want to say anything here. Let's go talk to Mo'at. Please?"

Neytiri sensed that Jake was deeply troubled by what he had learned. If what he had learned talking with Norm and Max was something that troubled Jake that deeply, it was probably for the best that he did not want to discuss things here were others might overhear – at least for now. "Perhaps mother is in her 'office'? We should try there." Neytiri knew that her attempt at levity by using Jake's word to describe her mother's grotto had had no effect on her mate. His mood worried her deeply. She took hold of Jake's hand, and led him off briskly back toward the Tree of Souls. The small crowd that had gathered around the olo'eyktan to hear news of his trip respectfully stayed behind. Neytiri could see the deeply troubled look on their faces as they left.

They quickly covered the short distance to the Tree of Souls and walked around to the back when they had arrived. They found Mo'at in her grotto talking with Alyara. The two women were startled by the abrupt appearance of the olo'eyktan and future Tsahik.

"I see you, Jakesuley, and you also, my daughter. I am having a… tchat… with young Alyara. Could you please give us some time?" Mo'at asked diplomatically.

"I am sorry, ma Tsahik," Jake began uneasily, "but I must insist that we speak now. It is a matter of great importance to all of the Na'vi."

Mo'at looked first at the expressions on the face of Jake, and then at her daughter. "I see that you are both gravely troubled." Mo'at looked over to Alyara who was also looking at the olo'eyktan and Neytiri, and placed her right hand gently on the shoulder of the young girl. "[Alyara, I will seek you out later. I must excuse myself to talk with olo'eyktan about some important matters that concern all Omaticaya. Please excuse us.]"

The pretty young Omaticaya girl, arose, bowed slightly to Jake and Neytiri, and then moved quietly past the two and out of the shaded grotto. Neytiri watched the girl go, noticing her height, level of fitness, the size of her breasts, and the way her tail twitched as she walked away. Neytiri was sure that this girl was attracted to Jake. She suppressed the pang of Jealousy that suddenly went through her, and turned to her mother who was standing quietly before them with her arms crossed, expectantly.

"Tsahik, I don't know how to begin," Jake stammered, obviously unsure of himself. "I don't know what the protocol – er, procedure – is in matters that affect all Omaticaya. No, all People I mean." Jake began pacing back and forth in the small space, which, because of its very limited width, meant that he took a single pace, turned, and took another, returning to his starting point. "The sky people are coming back. Parker, their leader, has not left Alpha Centauri system, our star. Norm, Max, the other humans and I all agree that given the incoming starship, and _what it contains_, Parker will almost definitely be trying something, an invasion, within about a year!"

Neytiri had been watching Jake while he had talked, and had been growing increasingly mad. Now she seemed to growl at Jake as she asked, "What do you mean coming back! In a year! Arrrgghrr!" Neytiri could no longer contain her frustration. "You said they would leave us for at least twelve years. How could this be happening so soon?"

"I'm sorry," Jake said, "from what Norm, Max and I thought, Parker would have gone home with his tail between his legs, and transmitted a message to Earth saying something like "We got our butts kicked off the moon."

Jake noticed both Neytiri and Mo'at had a curious look on their faces at his last sentence. "Sorry, it's another Earth expression. Dogs, an Earth pet – a um, an animal that humans keep for companionship – they often put their tail down, or between their legs when they know you're upset with them. Parker understands that his bosses on Earth will be upset when they find out he got kicked off of Pandora, so he might be trying to pull something together – an invasion – to try and get out of hot wat… trouble."

"I understand this," Mo'at began. "But what is it that bothers you, Jakesuley, about what this 'ship' contains?"

"It is a weapon, Tshaik. A weapon that flies higher than the highest ikran, higher than even mighty toruk can fly. It can See even the smallest animal from so far up in the sky that you cannot even see it. And it shoots exploding…" Jake paused trying to put the devastation wrought by a drone into terms the two women would understand. "…exploding arrows. That you can't see coming, that are always accurate – that rip People apart." Jake stopped, unsure if what he was saying was being understood. "You can't run or hide from these arrows. They're guided – they um, are steered… controlled… by the weapon itself, from high overhead." He stopped. The two women in front of Jake looked like they could not speak. Neytiri's expression had changed, while Jake had spoken, from anger to curiosity at this new machine, to horror at its capabilities. Mo'at slightly opened her mouth as if to say something, then closed it again, perplexed.

"Is there a tribal council or something like that?" Jake asked after a slight pause.

Mo'at considered his question for a moment, then replied, "We have two councils that you could take this matter before, Jakesuley. The council of Elders, or you could convene a war council. The choice is yours," Mo'at said softly, visibly upset. "It will be nearly certain that the council of elders will recommend a war council."

"How do I convene a war council?" Jake asked quietly.

"Summon the greatest hunter, and inform him, he will know what to do," Neytiri answered.

"Okay then," Jake said turning to his mate with a serious look on his face. "Neytiri, I wish to summon a war council."

Neytiri briefly gave Jake a small, embarrassed smile, and then put her hand on Jake's shoulder. "I will inform all who would be expected to come." She turned and was quickly gone. After she had left, Jake's shoulders collapsed. It was plainly visible to Mo'at that he had been strong for his mate's sake. Mo'at could see the fear and confusion in Jake. She turned away from the olo'eyktan for a moment to retrieve something from a large clay jar on one of the many rock shelves along the rear wall.

She was still facing away from Jake when she began to speak. "When you came to us, Jakesuley, you were fearless, strong. Yet you were also headstrong and like a child in our ways." She continued doing something that Jake could not see, and continued speaking with her back to him. "When I thrust my thorn into your chest and tasted your blood, I knew then our world was to change. I could taste your need to learn. I also tasted something else – that you were hiding something from us. The most overpowering thing I tasted that day was that you would lead the People out of the depths of great sorrow." Mo'at turned, holding something hidden from Jake in her hand.

It was covered by, and partially wrapped in a small ornately woven cloth with red, blue and yellow fibers that formed many small v-shaped symbols. Mo'at carried it with great reverence, with her other hand placed atop the cloth. "I told my mate of this," she continued, "but he remained unsure until the end. But this was why I freed you when all other Omaticaya had abandoned you and doc'tor Aug'ustine to die with our home. I knew that you would lead us out of the darkness – that you _will _lead us out into the light once more." Mo'at removed her left hand from atop the wrapped item, allowing Jake to see the intricately embroidered design in the center of the small textile. It was very obviously lovingly stitched, in a myriad of hues of reds, yellows and blacks. The design formed a perfectly executed flying toruk against a background of the V-shaped symbol painted on the heads of all who journey to iknimaya, except in hues of red instead of ochre.

Mo'at looked deeply into Jake's eyes before speaking again. "This sacred gift of toruk was made by the last Toruk Makto for the next – the one he foresaw in a vision from Eywa. One who led the People from the blackest darkness. The day he had this vision, toruk died. Toruk Makto was so saddened by the death of the one who had helped to end the Great Sorrow that he could not bear to part with his friend. He fashioned this of toruk's claws. Mo'at removed the woven cloth from what she had been holding to reveal a necklace unlike anything else Jake had ever seen before. It was large – each claw was nearly as long as a knife blade, and there were four of them arranges so that the longest two were in the center. Between each claw were strung two rows of large, irregularly-shaped beads fashioned from a kind of glassy, red, translucent material. "The last Toruk Makto never wore this – he did not intend it to be a decoration. Eywa instructed him to fashion this, so that when Toruk Makto rode again, the spirit of _this_ toruk would bond with that of your toruk. The strength of both will be wielded by you, mighty Toruk Makto."

Mo'at reverently placed the cloth on one of her shelves and held the leather sinew ends, allowing the full fearsome spectacle of the necklace to be appreciated. Jake could not speak, he simply turned around and slightly bowed so that Mo'at could secure the necklace around his neck. When she had finished, Jake turned around to look at the Tsahik. He began to say something, but she stopped him with a motion of her hand.

"You do not need to say anything Toruk Makto. Go, find your mate and the council she has gathered."

"[Thank you Tsahik. For this honored gift from our ancestors, and for sharing your wisdom.]" Jake turned to leave the grotto, feeling a bit unsure of himself as a leader, of exactly what he – what _they _would do. As he emerged into the slightly glowing bioluminescent twilight around him, he heard a sound from far off in the distance that made him stop in his tracks. Others around him had noticed the sound as well. A group of People close to Jake looked at him – at the necklace around his neck, covering much of his chest. The small group seemed restless, and began muttering something among themselves in Na'vi that Jake could not quite pick out. They grew slightly closer to look at the necklace. More People noticed what Jake was wearing, and before long a crowd had begun to form around him, the indistinct mutters continuing. Jake was scanning his immediate surroundings for his mate when he heard the cry again. Closer, louder.

Jake was the only Person among the Na'vi who was capable of the peculiar sensation that he began to experience the moment he heard the second cry, closer; the small hairs on the back of his neck stood erect, and a chill passed through his body. Around him, all the people were now standing, looking confused and concerned. And muttering, in ever-growing volume. A few looked nervously skyward. Just then, Jake saw Neytiri making her way toward him with five or six other Na'vi behind her. A few moments later, Neytiri was standing in front of Jake, awed by what he wore.

"Toruk Makto," she said reverently, reaching out her hand to very gently touch the long, curved claws. Jake placed his hand atop hers, and pulled her up to stand with him at the base of the Tree of Souls.

A third scream, much louder than the last pierced the air around them. Vague sounds of air being roughly displaced by beating wings could be heard now. The People began to withdraw from the center of the Well of Souls. From behind Jake, Mo'at emerged from the entrance to the grotto, a look of knowing on her face. She looked at Jake with a slight, yet intensely proud smile on the corners of her mouth.

All at once, a sound like a thousand gasps of surprise erupted from the assembled crown. Jake looked out at them to see from which direction toruk approached; he had not seen the mighty beast yet. But they were not looking skyward. The people were silently staring at Jake, even as another great screaming roar tore through the air around them and the sound of descent grew greater still.

"Toruk Makto!" someone in the crowd yelled, followed by a wave of shouts.

Neytiri grabbed Jake's hand firmly, looking into his eyes with a look of alarmed astonishment. "Jake, look down," she breathed.

Jake slowly looked down at the necklace he wore. The glassy red crystals that formed the small spacers between the claws were glowing dimly. Jake reached up to touch the red crystals, and as he did, a great bellow filled the Well of Souls and a sudden blast of wind announced the arrival of toruk. Jake looked up suddenly to see toruk enter the Well from directly over his head. The great beast descended rapidly toward the roosting ikran, who were fleeing as quickly as they could. Toruk executed a banking turn at the last minute and flapped its great wings three or four more times before settling twenty meters in front of Jake. It let out a great scream, and stared directly at Jake.

For the second time in less than three weeks, toruk had landed at the Tree of Souls. Not a single sound escaped the gathered mass of the Omaticaya; the only sounds were the slight movements of toruk as he adjusted his posture to cope with being on the ground – an unnatural place for him to be. Jake took a step down off the small ledge he was perched atop. Slowly, he made his way toward the great beast; the crowd immediately in front of him parting slightly to allow him to pass through. He emerged into a large circle around toruk into which no one other than Jake dared to pass. Toruk watched Jake intently as he walked closer, finally reaching the side of the great animal. Toruk bent its huge neck down to look into Jake's face with its massive pair of right eyes. It looked from Jake to the necklace around his neck, then back into Jake's eyes. The tiny Na'vi reached up with his impossibly small hand to stroke the side of toruk's face. Toruk let out a low, rattling growl as Jake ran his hand along toruk's jaw – he knew the sound. It was a controlled greeting. A sound that at once communicated the beast's willingness to participate in the mutual partnership, but only because of Eywa's insistence. Toruk would tolerate Jake for the good of all, but Jake knew they were not equals. Jake tried to communicate his respect for the beast by averting his eyes from directly gazing into toruk's. After a few moments, Jake turned to walk back to the Tree of Souls and toruk lept back into the night sky. Toruk disappeared without further vocalization and Jake led Neytiri and the small group of warriors into Mo'at's grotto without any further words.

The assembled Omaticaya waited silently.

* * *

She was walking through the same place she had dreamed of before – the sandy place with few low plants. The blue mountain was still on the horizon where it had appeared suddenly last time she had been here. Neytiri looked quickly down at her feet, to make sure she was not killing the small beetle-like scurrying things. She did not see them this time. Strangely, she also did not see her feet. Neytiri tried to hold up her right hand, but realized that she didn't have hands, or arms, or legs, or a middle. She realized with discomfort that she was both here and not here at the same time. Yet she still felt as if she were 'walking'. Walking effortlessly, unaffected, through the stiff, effacing wind and toward the far-off blue-purple mountain range.

The sand at the place where her feet would have been began to mobilize. At first it began to roll slightly in the wind, blowing along the ground. But as she watched, the speed and violence of the wind began to increase rapidly. The individual sand grains were lifted off of the ground, and were thrust through the air – through where she should be – and off into the distance. Neytiri looked up to see that the mountain in front of her had seemed to grow taller and distinctly bluer while she had been briefly contemplating the sand. The sky was also darker – it was the dark gray color of Angtsìk hide. As she levitated there, between the sand and windm watching the blue mountains, she began to see tiny details she had not been able to notice before. The small slivers of sun that momentarily peeked through the dark grey roiling clouds. The small wisp-like steam-tendrils that whipped off of the blue mountains, at the whim of increasingly ferocious wind. The way the blue mountain range seemed to heave and grow slightly as she watched it. The way its surface caught the slivers of light that fell out of the parting clouds to revealing a roiling, heaving surface. The way that the wind picked up as the mountain drew nearer. The way its surface was slightly transparent. The blue wall was nearly on top of her before her mind allowed her to process the impossible realization that what she was Seeing was a single, enormous wave. In the briefest instant before it struck her, she felt the cool touch of its legion of impossibly small droplets touch her. All sound stopped. And then it struck her.

What Neytiri thought would have happened did not – she was not smashed into pieces; in fact, in this vision, she had no body. The wall of water hit her, yet she remained in the same place, the water passing by her – through her. She felt it rushing past her improbably rapidly. She could sense the animals, the plants around her in the swirling, turbulent, black water suffering. Dying. Then she saw them. In front of her. The hulking, giant things that she had seen in her first vision. The ones who had asked her to find their young so that she could end their suffering.

They were shimmeringly black, with smooth skin. Their bodies were plump, tubular, with ten stout limbs, each bearing a paddle- or oar-like hand, each of which was slightly shorter or smaller than the preceding one. They had a series of flaps along what she thought were the upper and lower surfaces, and a kind of deep diagonal line that appeared to run from the belly to the upper side. Their black skin flashed in a rapid, rhythmic display of luminescence as they swam against the wave in a panicked group. They appeared to be swimming away from Neytiri, but at the same time they were coming toward her, back end first. As rapidly as they swam, they could not hold their ground against the impossible volume of water. As they passed by her, Neytiri looked into the eyes of one of the colossal beasts. It saw her there somehow – she did not know how, since she could not even see herself. She saw it's pleading – she experienced its angst. As it passed slowly, inevitably by her, Neytiri saw that it had something in its mouth. A tiny, terrified, six-limbed version of itself held firmly yet gently in the jaws of the gigantic animal.

She turned to watch helplessly as the animals continued their fight against the water. They moved farther and farther into the distance, swimming toward her with all their might, but still moving backward. Occasional ripples of light caught the ever diminishing face or head or flipper of the fleeing group. It took an impossibly long time before she lost sight of them. She looked in all directions around her. There was blackness to all sides, above and below. She could see nothing but completely clear, black water in every direction. She floated there, completely alone.

Bodiless.

* * *

**Definitions**

unil'kawng – bad dream.

lor txìm – beautiful ass.

zamtsìvo – 64 + 32. Four-base approximation of the five base one hundred.

sreton'ong tautxep – eclipse aurora. Literally, 'before sunset sky fire', because the sun has not actually 'set' in the normal manner.

kilvan'ngawn – literally, river worm.

oeru teya si – fills me with joy to see you.

'itanmunxta – son through marriage (mating) (son-in-law)

sa'nok muntxate – mother of my female spouse.

Kem – actions, deeds.

Tírusikx – the shaking (of the ground)

Oel ngati kameie tsmukan, ulte ngaru seiyi ireiyo terìng ngeyä tìrey. Ngari hu Eywa saleu tirea – I see you brother and give you thanks for giving your life. Your spirit goes to Eywa.

Txan Tsam 'Aw Trr – Great War of One Day.

zize'nantang – wasp viperwolf.

75


	3. Chapter 2 Convalescence, part 1: A Plan

"Of one thing I am certain, the body is not the measure of healing - peace is the measure."

-George Melton

Chapter 2. CONVALESCENCE

**2.1 A Plan**.

Interior, Venture Star.

Captain Daily moved her left hand upward onto the next white rung. Her face was fixed in an expression that could be described as a mixture of equal parts concentration and disapproval. She thought about the message she had just sent – how Parker had instructed her to tell the inbound ISV to not awaken the researchers. They were kids for Christ sake – they didn't deserve to be in the deep freeze for at least twelve years. They might not wake up at all if this went badly.

She continued climbing. The service shaft was brightly lit when someone was inside, or when one of the bulkheads was opened, otherwise the lights were turned off to save juice. Everything was stark white, just like everywhere else in the rotating tube. No matter how many times she had taken this route over the past twenty-five or so months she had been on active duty, she always thought about how weird it was that even though the bridges were located on the outer, spin side of each rotating crew module, she had to climb 'upward' to reach the rest of the module. She continued to climb upward, passing the second level bulkhead. When she reached the third bulkhead, she climbed off the access ladder, and opened the bulkhead door into level three. She often preferred to use the ladder to get between levels even though the lift would get here where she needed to go faster. But the ladder provided a bit of a distraction, and it also gave her some exercise throughout the long 'days'.

She stepped through the door into the small central corridor. The cylindrical module contained six levels – the bridge was the lowest level, furthest outboard where it could be afforded a view forward past the engine pods, fuel tanks, and heat shields. The layout of each level above the bridge was, for the most part, identical – with the exception of levels three and six. The central part, or tube, contained the elevator shaft, service ladder, and the electrical, systems, and life support chases. A narrow corridor ringed the space around the tube, and a series of narrow compartments opened off of that. The circular nature of the module's cross-section meant that each compartment was wider at its outer wall than its inner, and some of the arrangements that had been thought up by RDA designers were almost laughable. Like placing the welded-in storage units so close to the bulkhead doors - when the doors and drawers were open, you couldn't walk by.

The number of compartments was about the only thing that varied from level to level. Level two had only four compartments; three of these were staterooms for senior flight staff while the fourth served as a conference room – Parker had taken that room over as his operations center. The staterooms for senior flight staff were much less than Spartan considering the space less senior command and support staff occupied, or rather lack thereof. Levels four and five were more crew housing, and level six was stores, local power management, redundant systems, et cetera.

Level three, however, was almost completely open. Most of the level was occupied by the common area. The affectionately termed 'sludge' dispensary, an automated, self-operated food dispenser that ejected various 'flavors' of thick, paste-like algae-protein-cereal slurries was centered on the main wall, with 'coffee', 'milk', 'juice', and Coke machines nearby. Almost no one aboard could detect any difference between the so-called flavors of sludge – the only real difference other than color was the artificial smell that the food-like substance was infused with. Ironically, it did _smell _edible. Shiny plastic tables and benches were bolted to the floor, and there were a few small round portals, out of which the interstellar sights just outside the module could be seen. A large holographic monitor displayed a four years and three months old 'live' news feed from Earth – the RDA owned Fox 'news'.

The other third of the level was occupied by fitness equipment, laundry facilities, public heads, and the steam hygiene units. Like all levels, the commons were rather brightly lit, had clean white walls, and a sand grain-like, non-slip gray floor. She stepped away from the bulkhead after she had secured it, and moved purposefully toward one of the tables where a few people were seated.

"Parker," she said arriving behind her intended target, "I don't like it, but it's done – the message is sent."

Parker had turned around while captain Daily was half way through her statement. He now sat looking up at the much taller woman with a half-smile on his face. "Captain Daily, thanks so much for the update. How are the surface personnel?"

"We've been processing them as quickly as possible. Our life support systems were not designed to have so many _conscious_ people on board. It's been a bit of a tax on the systems, but we'll make it okay. Just about all the non-essential surface people are now in cryo. The SECOPS personnel have been transferred to crew module two. We've got a total of twenty-two injured in the makeshift medical center over there on level three. All nonessential planetside staff who were willing to train alongside the SECOPS people are there too – there were another fifteen, I believe. It's tight in there, and we only have enough food for everyone that's awake for just over a year and a half."

"That's not good," Parker said, frowning now. "Alright, captain, take a seat please." The captain did as instructed, taking a seat opposite Parker, next to Ronnie. Parker turned back to the gathered group to resume his discussion. "Okay, so the message we just sent to the Centauri Enterprise offers their non-SECOPS passengers more than double pay if they're willing to wake up early and train with SECOPS as infantry, same deal we offered the non-security people here. They will know our entire situation when they receive this message, as well as our plan on how we're going to reverse our present situation. I've asked the current duty captain, a – um," Parker leafed through the clipboard in front of him, finding the information he was looking for rapidly, "Dwight Stevenson, if he'll also wake the avatar drivers, brief them, and see if one of them will work with us.

"_If _we get all the miners, refinery people and other non-essentials on board, the upper estimate of ground forces is around one-hundred and ten or so. The low estimate is around ninety. So, the plan is a bit fluid right now – but I'll solidify it as things move along and I know more about our ground force numbers and races – it would be helpful if we had at least one puppet driver on board."

Parker picked up his coffee cup from off the reflective table surface, stood abruptly and walked five or six steps to the coffee machine. He turned to look back toward the table as he waited for the black caffeinated coffee-like fluid to be dispensed into his cup. "So what do we have on the satellites Ronnie?" he asked as he picked his mug back up and walked toward the table again.

"Well, boss," Ronnie began, "with the DCOMSAT removed from orbit, Hell's Gate loses a lot of capability. They can no longer communicate with the incoming ISV's or with Earth, _directly._ They can't…"

"What do you mean, _directly_," Parker interrupted.

"Well, we've taken away their only potential means of direct communication with Earth using the coherent optical bands. But boss, there are nineteen PhD's and another five or so master's down there, and who knows what they're capable of putting together," Ronnie said.

"Wait, wait, wait," Parker stuttered, shaking his head slightly and looking mildly confused. "I thought there were only fifteen or so people left at Hell's Gate?" Parker asked.

"Yeah, boss, but some of them have more than one doctorate, or a second degree as well. There's someone down there with three PhD's."

"Oh," Parker said quietly, the confusion leaving his face. "That's a lot of friggin' brains in one head." Then laughing slightly, "How the hell does his head not explode? Sorry, go on."

"Actually, it's a _her _boss." Ronnie looked over at Parker to see him raise his right eyebrow a bit, then he continued. "So, um – the DCOMSAT acted as a communications relay to the other satellites, so they've effectively lost the usage of all the deeper orbital sensor arrays and relays. Currently they only have control over three satellites that matter – the most important one for us is their planetside com satellite. They've also still got control over an orbital imaging system, and a geo survey platform. Neither of these really poses a threat to us. They can't use these to communicate with Earth, the other satellites, or really to do much of anything at all except take pretty pictures.

Boss, you gotta figure they know we're still here now. The DCOMSAT will have transmitted an environmental image when it was disturbed. The shuttle guys were pretty careful, but it's impossible to say if the camera picked up the arm or not."

"Okay, so they may know we're still home. Good. You got any good news, Ronnie?" Parker said with a scowl.

Parker's last remark was not lost on Ronnie, who now scowled himself. "Unfortunately, that's not all boss. They are current on all communications, documents, codes, rosters and manifests up to the point that they were cut out. These would have automatically been logged, entered into the file storage system, and an audible tone generated and a message on the main comms terminal announcing that a new file from RDA had been received. Anyone down there with just half a brain – just _one _graduate degree – probably would have checked the incoming ISV manifests by now as well. Especially if they think something is wonky. If they know we're still here, I'd say there's about a one-hundred point zero percent probability they've also spotted the drones on the manifest."

"Lovely." Parker turned his gaze to a fit, short-haired late thirty-something woman dressed in SECOPS fatigues. "Parker had known this woman for some time – she had been Quaritchs' third or fourth in command for at least the last two years, but Parker often wondered if she really was female. She had been the military communications officer the day Quaritch had fucked everything up, and so, she had been on the base. Which was probably why she was still alive, Parker mused. "Sergeant Cooper, How is the training coming along?"

"Well, sir," she began a bit nervously Parker thought, "I hope you aint expectin' miracles. Three quarters of the one-hundred percent healthy SECOPS personnel are in, or will shortly be in cryosleep. These are the guys that are ready as soon as they wake up to fight. We've kept a training contingent of eight healthy SECOPS people with good morale and good skills awake, over in the other, um – crew module.

We've started the training routines. But sir, it's going to take some time just getting them into shape _before _we can even start the real training. We've got mostly a bunch of overweight guys with nearly no fitness level. We're starting at a level below what we normally get as green recruits."

"Sergeant, I appreciate your predicament, I do. But this is _your_ job. Right now, your only job, your only mission in life – is to get these men and women into shape to take orders and to fight." Parker had been looking into the sergeant's eyes, but now he relaxed back over his bench a bit, and clasped his hands behind his head, staring off into space again. "Sergeant, the success of our plan depends, in no small part, on ground operations. These operations cannot be successful with weakly trained people who don't know how to walk through the jungle, and can't even button their fatigues over their flabby bellies. Get them into shape!"

"Yes, sir! I just wanted you to know our starting point, sir. We've begun rationing their caloric intake, and initiated aggressive, monitored cardio training. We hope to have 'em in shape to begin actual military and security training within two months. That gives us the better part of a year to do the martial arts skills, hand to hand, ops, weapons, and survival skills."

"Good, that sounds like it'll fit into the timeline very well," Parker said quietly.

"We will, of course, need to take most of these cardio machines," Sergeant Cooper said, pointing to the row of treadmills, stationary bicycles and other exercise equipment.

"Done. Take what you need," Parker said levelly.

"Wait just one minute," Captain Daily interrupted. "We have close to twenty active duty flight personnel that need to get rid of their excess energy in a non-hormone-driven manner. Exercise is an essential part of the health and well-being of both the body and mind. If my crew doesn't get adequate exercise, they could wind up stir-crazy before they go actual, you know – _crazy _crazy."

"Okay, okay. Sergeant, take only the treadmills, leave everything else," Parker barked.

"Yes sir, thank you."

"Alright people, we got a timeline – let's stick to it!" Parker said standing up. The people around him took this as their cue that the meeting was over. The captain and sergeant both got up and walked toward the lift. Parker could hear them chatting about something inconsequential as they waited the few moments for the lift to arrive. Ronnie stayed sitting at the table looking down at his feet, obviously deep in thought.

"I don't like it boss," Ronnie said after the captain and sergeant had disappeared behind the lift door, sealing them out of the conversation. "We don't have nearly enough ground troops to pull it off, and I don't like sending in another avatar. After what that tactic cost us last time, I think we should just leave all the science types in cryo, as planned, and just go with the drones."

"I know it's less than perfect, Ronnie," Parker said with a frown. "But this time, _if _we have a blue puppet driver, they'll be in orbit with us, and we can pull the plug at any time if shit gets out of control. The ground forces will be spread pretty thin, but they're all going to be on _specific_ missions. Not the goddamned blast fest Quaritch rode into the ground." Parker paused briefly in thought; he stood arms crossed gazing off into space as he so often did when he thought a problem through. "You know," he said at last, "this may not be the final version of the plan we enact. It's a good working draft, but we got two inbound SECOPS higher-ups. I'm bettin' that once they hear about how Quaritch's plan went south, they'll be eager to help get RDA back in control of Pandora. It'll be good for their careers."

Ronnie just looked up from his seat and nodded. It was going to be a long year and a half.

6


End file.
